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LIBRARY 


PURCHASED  FROM 
THE 

WILLIAM  C.   SCHERMERHORN 
MEMORIAL  FUND 


The   PLEROMA 

An  Essay  on  the 

Origin  of  Christianity 


By 

Dr.  Paul  Carus 


"Res  ipsa,  quae  nunc  religio  Christiana  nuncupatur,  erat 
apud  antiques,  nee  defuit  ab  initio  generis  humani,  quousque 
Christus  veniret  in  carnem,  unde  vera  religio,  quae  iam  erat, 
coepit  appellari  Christiana." — St.  Augustine. 


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Copyright  by 

THE  OPEN  COURT  PUBLISHING  COMPANY. 
1900 


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CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER.  PAGE. 

CHRISTIANITY   PREDETERMINED  BY  THE  NEEDS 
OF  THE  AGE. 

I.  The  Gentile  Character  of  Christianity 1 

II.  The  Old  Paganism 13 

III.  Paganism    Redivivus 20 

PRE-CHRISTIAN    GNOSTICISM,    THE    BLOOM    PRE- 
CEDING THE  FRUITAGE  OF  CHRISTIANITY. 

IV.  The  Period  of  Transition 25 

V.  The   Gnostic   Movement 35 

Zabians    and    Mandicans 35 

Ophites   or    Naasseans 38 

Religion   of    Mani 41 

VI.  Kindred  Sects  in  Palestine  and  Egypt 43 

The  Simonians 43 

The  Therapeutes,  the  Essenes,  the  Nazarenes 
and  the   Ebionites 44 

HOW  THE  GENTILE  SAVIOUR  CHANGED  INTO  THE 
CHRIST. 

VII.  The  Process  of  Idealization 49 

VIII.  The  Persians  and  the  Jews 59 

IX.  The  Christ  of  the  Revelation  of  St.  John 69 

X.  Christian    Sentiment     in     Pre-Christian     Re- 
ligions       '^^ 

XL  Why  Christianity  Conquered 79 

THE  ORIGIN  OF  JUDAISM  AND  ITS  SIGNIFICANCE 
FOR  CHRISTIANITY. 
XII.  The  Paganism  of  Ancient  Israel 83 

XIII.  The  Temple  Reform  of  Judaism 90 

XIV.  The  Babylonian  Exile 95 

XV.  The   Dispersion    99 

XVI.  Jew   and   Gentile 107 

XVII.  The  Judaism  of  Jesus 112 

CONCLUSION. 

XVIII.  Summary    123 

XIX.  The  Future  of  Christianity 131 

XX.  Religion  Eternal 137 

Collateral  Reading 145 

Index  148 


PREFACE. 

THIS  little  book  is  a  mere  sketch.  With  concise 
brevity  it  treats  a  great  theme — the  origin  of 
Christianity  —  which  deserves  the  attention  of  the 
thoughtful.  The  author  concentrates  his  presentation 
of  the  case  upon  the  main  features,  treating  them  and 
them  only,  with  a  considerable  attention  to  detail ;  but 
he  hopes  by  this  limitation  to  the  most  salient  points 
to  bring  clearness  into  a  subject  which  has  never  been 
fully  understood  on  account  of  the  many  bewildering 
side  issues  that  surround  and  often  obscure  the  main 
problem. 

The  solution  here  offered  contains  some  new  points 
of  view  which  the  author  has  gradually  gained  through 
his  study  of  detached  portions  of  this  large  subject, 
yet  in  all  his  several  inquiries  the  results  have  led  to 
the  same  conclusion  which  is  here  summarized. 

Christianity  is  not  the  result  of  accident,  but  of 
necessity.  There  are  definite  causes  and  definite  effects. 
Its  doctrines,  its  ceremonies,  its  ethics  are  the  product 
of  given  conditions  and  the  result  could  not  be  different. 

Yet  we  might  say  more.  If  local  conditions  had 
been  different,  some  important  details  in  the  constitu- 
tion of  Christianity  would  also  be  different,  but  the 
essential  features  would  after  all  have  remained  the 
same. 


vl  PREFACE. 

As  there  are  remarkable  parallels  between  Chris- 
tianity and  other  religions,  even  where  no  historical 
connections  can  be  traced,  so  we  may  be  assured  that 
even  on  other  planets  where  rational  beings  have  devel- 
oped, a  religion  of  universal  love  will  be  preached  and 
will  hold  up  the  ideal  of  a  divine  Saviour,  be  he  called 
Christ,  or  Buddha,  or  the  Prophet,  or  the  manifestation 
of  God;  and  he,  representing  the  eternal  in  the  tran- 
sient, will  be  to  many  millions  a  source  of  comfort  in 
the  tribulations  of  life  and  in  the  face  of  death.  There 
are,  as  in  all  world-religions,  certain  features  in  Chris- 
tianity which  are  rooted  in  the  universal  laws  of 
cosmic  existence. 

The  author's  method  is  purely  scientific.  He  does 
not  enter  into  controversies  as  to  whether  or  not  the 
course  of  history  should  have  been  different.  He  has 
investigated  the  origin  of  Christianity  as  a  botanist 
would  study  the  growth  of  a  tree.  He  does  not  say 
that  the  tree  should  be  different,  and  still  less  that 
it  should  be  cut  down.  He  only  knows  that  the 
tree  still  stands  today  and  that  many  enjoy  the  hospi- 
tality of  its  shade  and  live  upon  its  fruit. 


ERRATA. 

Pages  4,  44  and  45  (also  Contents  and  Index).  For  "Thera- 
peutes"  read  "Tlierapents." 

Page  29,  note  2.    P'or  dpxvos  read  dpxvyos. 

Page  29,  note  3.     For  reXetw^et  s  dyevero  read  reXewOels  eyeviro. 

Page  38,  note  8.     For  o^ts  read  o<pis. 

Page  39,  note  10.     For  dyadodai  fiuiv  read  dya6oSai/j.wv. 

Page  44,  note  17.     For  Ovtos  ecxrivi]  read  Outos  co-tu'  17. 

Page  45.  For  lines  i-ii,  substitute  the  following:  "In  his  De 
vita  contcmt'lativa,  Philo  tells  us  of  the  Therapeuts  in 
Egypt  who  led  a  life  of  holiness,  religious  contemplation 
and  divine  worship,  anticipating  so  much  that  is  com- 
monly regarded  as  Christian,  that  the  date  and  author- 
ship of  the  book  have  been  questioned  by  Graetz,  Lucius 
and  others.  Eusebius  discusses  Philo's  report  at  length 
(Eccl.  Hist.,  II,  17)  and  comes  to  the  conclusion  that 
the  Therapeuts  must  have  been  Christians.  His  view, 
however,  rests  upon  a  weak  foundation,  namely,  etc." 

Page  109,  note  9.     For  "Delitzch"  read  "Delitzsch." 


CHRISTIANITY    PREDETERMINED 

BY  THE 

NEEDS  OF  THE  AGE. 


CHAPTER  I. 
THE  GENTILE  CHARACTER  OF  CHRISTIANITY. 

Tl  rE  READ  in  the  Epistle  to  the  Galatians  (iv.,  4) 
^  '  that  "When  the  fulness  of  the  time^  was  come, 
God  sent  forth  his  Son";  and  in  the  Epistle  to  the 
Ephesians  (i.  10)  we  are  told  that  "In  the  dispensation 
of  the  fulness  of  times^  he  might  gather  together  in 
one  all  things^  in  Christ,  both  which  are  in  heaven  and 
which  are  on  earth."  Such  is  the  impression  which  the 
early  Christians  had  of  the  origin  of  Christianity,  and 
they  were  not  mistaken  in  the  main  point  that  Chris- 
tianity was  a  fulfilment,  or,  as  it  was  called  in  Greek,  a 
"pleroma,"  although  we  would  add  that  this  pleroma 
was  neither  mystical  nor  mysterious  as  they  were  in- 
clined to  think;  it  was  not  supernatural  in  a  dualistic 
sense,  but  the  result  of  natural  conditions. 

We  propose  to  discuss  the  origin  of  Christianity  and 
will  point  out,  in  a  condensed  and  brief  exposition,  the 
main  factors  which  combined  to  produce  it.  Chris- 
tianity ushers  in  a  new  period,  and  its  conception  of  life 
is  so  absolutely  different  from  the  past,  that  with  the 
date  of  Christ's  birth  mankind  began  a  new  chronology. 
Its  origin  was  attributed  by  many  to  a  personal  inter- 

*  TrXrjpwfjua.  tov  )(p6vov. 
^  TrXrjpwixa   Twv   Kaipwv. 
Literally  "all  things  had  come  to  a  head." 


2  THE  PLEROMA. 

ference  of  God  with  the  affairs  of  the  world,  and  we 
wish  to  explain  how  the  new  faith  grew  naturally  from 
the  preceding  ages  whose  converging  lines  were  gath- 
ered into  a  head  in  the  figure  of  Christ  and  all  that  was 
thereby  represented. 

Christianity  might  have  borne  a  different  name  and 
Christ  might  have  been  worshiped  under  another  title, 
and  yet  the  world-religion  which  originated  when  the 
converging  lines  of  the  several  religious  developments 
in  the  East  as  well  as  in  the  West  were  combined  into 
a  higher  unity,  would  not  and  could  not  have  become 
greatly  different  from  what  it  actually  turned  out  to  be. 
Its  character  was  in  the  main  predetermined  according 
to  the  natural  law  of  spiritual  conditions,  and  in  this 
sense  we  say  that  Christianity  was  indeed  the  fulfilment 
of  the  times,  the  pleroma  of  the  ages. 

^  ^  ^ 

Christianity  is  commonly  regarded  as  the  daughter 
of  Judaism,  and  this  view  is  taught  not  only  in 
Sunday  schools,  but  also  in  profane  history.  It  is 
deemed  an  established  fact  that  Christianity,  the  relig- 
ion prevailing  all  over  Europe  and  among  the  races 
that  have  sprung  from  the  European  continent,  is  the 
lineal  descendant  of  the  religion  of  Moses,  especially  of 
its  later  form,  Judaism,  and  it  is  treated  as  a  foregone 
conclusion  that  this  little  nation  of  Israel  was  by  divine 
dispensation  chosen  to  prepare  the  way  for  the  appear- 
ance of  Christianity.  But  this  view  is  by  no  means 
correct,  or,  to  say  the  least,  it  needs  so  many  qualifica- 


THE  GENTILE   CHARACTER   OF   CHRISTIANITY.    3 

tions  that  its  restatement  would  amount  to  a  radical 
reversal  of  the  theory.  The  traditional  view  seems 
plausible  only  because  we  have  become  accustomed  to 
it,  and  yet  we  shall  be  compelled  to  grant  that  it  is  not 
in  agreement  with  the  facts  of  history.  A  considera- 
tion of  the  actual  development  of  religious  thought 
forces  upon  us  conclusions  which  are  very  different. 

Without  denying  the  enormous  influence  which  Ju- 
daism exercised  on  Christianity  from  its  very  start,  we 
make  bold  to  say  that  Judaism  did  not  bear  or  bring 
forth  Christianity,  but  that  Christianity  is,  so  to  speak, 
a  grandchild  of  ancient  paganism,  and  the  motherhood 
of  Judaism  is  by  adoption,  merely.  At  the  time  of  the 
birth  of  Christianity,  the  new  faith,  while  still  in  the 
process  of  formation,  was  groping  for  some  religion 
under  whose  guidance  and  authority  it  might  proceed 
on  its  historical  career,  and  Judaism  appeared  best  fitted 
for  the  purpose.  A  world-religion  of  the  character  of 
Christianity  would  have  originated  in  the  same  or  quite 
a  similar  way,  with  the  same  or  quite  similar  doctrines, 
with  the  same  tendencies  and  the  same  ethics,  the  same 
or  quite  similar  rituals,  etc.,  etc.,  even  if  Judaism  had 
not  existed  or  had  not  been  chosen  as  its  mother.  The 
spirit  of  Christianity  was  pagan  from  the  start,  not 
Jewish ;  yea,  un-Jewishly  pagan,  it  was  Gentile,  and 
it  continued  to  retain  a  very  strongly  pronounced  hos- 
tility towards  everything  Jewish. 

The  current  view  of  the  origin  of  Christianity  would 
have  us  look  upon  Jesus  as  its  founder,  and  that  is  true 


4  THE  PLEROMA 

in  a  certain  sense,  but  not  so  unconditionally  true  as  is 
generally  assumed.  Christianity  is  a  religion  which 
originated  during  the  middle  of  the  first  century  of  the 
Christian  era  through  the  missionary  activity  of  the 
Apostle  Paul.  He  founded  the  Gentile  Church  upon 
the  ruins  of  the  ancient  pagan  religions,  and  he  took 
his  building  materials,  not  from  the  storehouse  of  the 
faith  of  his  fathers,  but  from  the  wreckage  of  the 
destroyed  temples  of  the  Gentiles. 

The  old  creeds  were  no  longer  believed  in  and  a  new 
religion  was  developing  in  the  minds  of  the  people. 
The  single  myths  had  become  discredited  and  the  gods 
had  ceased  to  be  regarded  as  actual  presences;  but  the 
world-conception  which  had  shaped  the  pagan  myths 
remained  unimpaired ;  yea  more,  it  had  become  matured 
by  philosophy,  and  it  could  still  reproduce  a  new  form- 
ulation of  them  in  such  a  shape  as  would  be  acceptable 
to  the  new  generation. 

We  know  that  in  the  Augustan  age,  shortly  before 
and  after,  there  were  several  religions  and  religious 
philosophies.  Almost  every  one  of  them  was  kin  to 
the  spirit  of  Christianity  and  contributed  its  share, 
large  or  small,  to  the  constitution  of  the  new  faith  that 
was  forming  itself  in  the  Roman  empire. 

There  was  a  great  variety  of  gnostic  sects,  Man- 
dseans,  Ophites,  Therapeutes,  Manichaeans,  etc.,  at  this 
time.  The  main  centers  were  Asia  Minor,  Syria  and 
Egypt.  The  gnostic  doctrines  are  not  Christian  here- 
sies, as  Church  historians  would  have  it,  but,  on  the 


THE  GENTILE   CHARACTER  OF  CHRISTIANITY.    5 

contrary,  Christianity  is  a  branch  of  the  gnostic  move- 
ment. Gnosticism  antedates  Christianity,  but  when 
Christianity  finally  got  the  ascendancy,  it  claimed  a 
monopoly  of  the  beliefs  held  in  common  with  the  gnos- 
tic sects,  and  repudiated  all  differences  as  aberrations 
from  Christian  truth. 

The  Gnostics,  however,  were  not  the  only  ones  in 
the  field.  There  were  the  Sethites,  worshipers  of  the 
Egyptian  Seth  who  was  identified  by  the  Jews  with 
the  Biblical  Seth,  the  son  of  Adam.  Further,  there 
were  the  believers  in  Hermes  Trismegistos,  a  Hellen- 
ized  form  of  the  Egyptian  Ptah,  the  incarnation  of  the 
divine  Word.  A  purified  paganism  was  taught  by 
stoics  such  as  Epictetus  and  Marcus  Aurelius,  repre- 
sentatives of  which  are  Hypatia  and  Emperor  Julian 
the  Apostate.  Kin  to  this  idealized  paganism  was  the 
school  of  neo-Platonism  as  represented  by  Philo,  Plo- 
tinus  and  Porphyry.  Moreover,  there  were  not  a  few 
who  revered  Apollonius  of  Tyana  as  the  herald  of  the 
new  universal  religion  that  was  dawning  on  mankind. 

In  the  second  century  of  the  Christian  era,  still  an- 
other faith  grew  rapidly  into  prominence  and  promised 
to  become  the  established  religion  of  the  Roman  Em- 
pire. This  was  Mithraism,  the  Romanized  form  of  the 
ancient  faith  of  Persia;  but  at  the  moment  when  it 
seemed  to  have  attained  an  unrivaled  sway  over  the 
Roman  army  and  its  leaders,  Christianity,  the  religion 
of  the  lowly,  of  the  broad  masses,  of  the  common 
people,  came  to  the  front,  and  having  found  a  powerful 


6  THE  PLEROMA. 

leader  in  Constantine,  wrongly  surnamed  the  Great,  it 
dislodged  all  its  rivals  and  permanently  established 
itself  as  the  sole  universal  religion  in  the  Roman  world. 

We  will  not  investigate  here  the  claims  of  these  rival 
religions ;  we  are  satisfied  to  state  the  fact  that  Chris- 
tianity remained  victor  and  survived  alone  in  the  strug- 
gle for  existence,  because  it  fulfilled  best  the  demands 
of  the  age.  Whatever  may  be  said  in  favor  of  one  or 
another  of  the  conquered  creeds,  Christianity  satisfied 
the  needs  of  the  people  better  than  either  Mithraism  or 
gnosticism,  or  a  reformed  paganism  of  any  kind. 

There  is  one  point  worth  mentioning,  however, 
which  is  this :  the  better  we  become  acquainted  with 
these  several  rival  faiths,  the  more  we  are  compelled 
to  grant,  that  whatever  the  outcome  of  their  competition 
might  have  been  if  Christianity  had  not  carried  off  the 
palm,  the  religion  that  in  such  a  case  would  have  finally 
become  recognized  as  the  universal  religion,  would  in 
all  essential  doctrines,  in  its  institutions  and  ceremo- 
nies, have  been  the  same  as  the  religion  of  the  Chris- 
tian Church.  No  doubt  it  would  have  differed  in  im- 
portant details,  but  the  underlying  world-conception, 
the  philosophy  of  its  creed,  the  theology  of  its  dogmas, 
and  above  all  its  moral  standards  together  w'ith  its 
ethical  principles,  would  have  been  almost  identical. 
These  essentials  were  not  made  by  one  man;  certainly 
not  by  Jesus,  who  does  not  even  so  much  as  hint  at  any 
of  them.  They  are  the  hoary  ideas  and  convictions 
which  had  prevailed  among  nations  since  times  imme- 


THE  GENTILE  CHARACTER  OF  CHRISTIANITY.    7 

morial,  remodeled  in  the  shape  in  which  they  appealed 
to  the  then  living  generation.  The  old  traditions  of 
past  ages,  cherished  in  the  subconscious  realms  of  the 
folk-soul,  constitute  the  foundations  of  Christianity, 
and  they  are  pagan,  not  Jewish. 


By  "pagans"  we  mean  here  the  Gentiles,  i.  e.,  the 
nations  outside  of  Judaism,  and  we  ask  the  reader  not 
to  attach  either  a  derogatory  or  eulogistic  meaning  to 
the  word.  In  other  connections  we  have  used  the  word 
"pagans"  in  the  sense  of  unprogressive  people  to  whom 
the  superstitions  of  former  ages  are  still  clinging,  who, 
to  the  neglect  of  the  spirit  and  significance  of  religious 
myths,  dogmas,  rituals,  etc.,  cling  to  the  letter  of  their 
symbolical  expression,  and  through  a  lack  of  under- 
standing seek  salvation  in  such  externalities  as  dogma- 
tism and  ceremonialism.  In  this  sense  we  look  upon 
men  such  as  Socrates  and  Plato  not  as  pagans,  while 
we  may  very  well  speak  of  "Christian  pagans"  to  char- 
acterize those  who  have  not  understood  the  meaning  of 
Christian  dogmas,  but  accept  the  letter  of  dogmas  un- 
thinkingly. There  are  not  a  few  Christians  who  are 
ready  to  agree  with  us  that  Christianity  is  not  yet  fully 
Christianized.  In  the  present  usage  "pagan"  is  a 
synonym  of  Gentile  and  means  non-Jewish.  We  have 
come  to  the  conclusion  that  the  spirit  of  paganism, 
which  is  that  of  natural  mankind,  is  the  same  as  that 
of  Christianity.     The  sole  difference  is  that  in  Chris- 


8  THE  PLEROMA. 

tianity  many  pagan  traditions  are  fused  together  and 
constitute,  on  the  background  of  Judaism,  a  summary 
of  the  most  essential,  the  noblest  and  finest  traditions 
of  pre-Christian  paganism,  thus  representing  the  ma- 
tured grain  garnered  at  the  time  of  harvest. 

In  modern  times  the  word  pagan  has  acquired  the 
secondary  meaning  of  a  faith  that  is  non-European,  for 
today  when  we  speak  of  pagan  we  think  first  of 
Asiatics,  Africans,  Australians  and  South  Sea  Island- 
ers. The  reader  must  banish  this  secondary  and  mod- 
ern sense  of  the  word  and  bear  in  mind  that  at  the 
time  of  the  beginning  of  the  Christian  era  only  a  few 
of  the  colored  races  had  been  heard  of. 

There  is  a  tendency  at  the  present  time  to  extol  the 
Asiatic  at  the  expense  of  the  European,  and  praise  the 
savage  for  the  sake  of  denouncing  civilized  man.  Thus 
it  has  come  to  pass  that  paganism  in  this  sense,  viz., 
the  view  of  the  modern  pagan,  which  means  anything 
exotic  or  outlandish,  is  shown  up  for  the  purpose  of 
reviling  our  own  inheritance.  These  tendencies  are 
foreign  to  the  present  discourse  and  I  hope  that  none  of 
my  readers  will  impute  any  such  intent  to  me.  The 
paganism  to  which  reference  is  made  in  this  book,  is 
our  intellectual  ancestry.  The  predecessors  of  Christian 
thought  are  men  such  as  Socrates,  Plato,  Aristotle,  and 
in  addition,  the  sages  of  Egypt  as  well  as  Babylon, 
Zarathushtra  with  incident  echoes  from  the  far  East. 

Further  we  ought  to  bear  in  mind  that  Christianity, 
in  spreading  over  Northern  Europe,  incorporated  not 


THE  GENTILE  CHARACTER  OF  CHRISTIANITY.    9 

a  little  of  the  Teutonic  world  conception,*  and  some  of 
us  would  be  astonished  to  find  the  kinship  of  the  Saxon 
belief  in  Thor  with  the  early  mediaeval  faith  in  Christ, 
as    it   is   for    instance,    represented    in    The   Heliand. 

The  Oriental  of  today  is  a  good  man  who  ought 
not  to  be  underrated.  We  owe  him  consideration  and 
sometimes  respect.  We  must  not  be  too  proud  to  learn 
from  him.  But  there  is  no  reason  to  belittle  our  own 
civilization  as  materialistic,  or  to  look  up  to  the  tur- 
baned  fakir  as  the  representative  of  spirituality.  Such 
extravagances  will  not  be  endorsed  by  the  author  of 
this  book,  who,  when  speaking  of  pagans,  here  means 
the  pre-Christian  gentiles,  whose  thoughts  have  become 
the  constituent  factors  of  Western  civilization. 

The  nations  of  Europe,  and  of  America,  too,  are  the 
children  of  pagan  antiquity,  and  we  claim  that  they 
owe  to  it,  not  only  their  general  culture,  but  also  the 
essential  tenets  of  their  religion. 


It  is  often  claimed  that  ancient  paganism  is  monistic 
while  Christianity  is  dualistic;  but  this  is  an  error. 
Paganism  appears  monistic  only  to  those  modern  sym- 
pathizers who  assume  its  naturalistic  naivete  to  be  an 
indication  of  the  pagan's  love  of  nature  and  of  a  repudi- 
ation of  supernaturalism ;  but  the  ancient  Greeks  be- 
lieved in  supernaturalism  as  much  as  did  the  early 

^Compare  "Religion  of  Our  Ancestors"  in  The  Open  Court, 
Volume  XI.  Page  177. 


10  THE  PLEROMA. 

Christians,  and  neo-Platonism  is  as  dualistic  as  any 
Christian  philosophy.  There  is  only  this  difference, 
that  pagan  duahsm  is  not  as  yet  so  emphatic,  nor  is  it 
so  ascetic  as  Christian  duahsm. 

Judaism  is  less  dualistic  than  either  Greek  paganism 
or  Christianity ;  and  it  is  certain  that  Christianity  does 
not  owe  its  dualism  to  the  Jews,  but  adopted  it  because 
it  was  the  spirit  of  the  age.  A  monistic  conception  of 
religion  would  have  had  no  chance  of  success  whatever. 
Dualism  in  a  well-defined  form  was  in  the  air,  so  to 
speak,  since  Plato,  and  prevailed  absolutely  in  neo- 
Platonism,  but  in  the  beginning  of  the  Christian  era 
it  spread  everywhere.  Read  Seneca,  Epictetus,  Marcus 
Aurelius  or  other  pagan  philosophers,  and  you  cannot 
help  being  impressed  not  only  with  the  dualism,  but 
even  with  the  Christian  character  of  their  thoughts. 

Students  of  the  history  of  religion  find  enough  evi- 
dence of  the  pagan  origin  of  Christian  ceremonies, 
sacraments,  rites  and  symbols.  Baptism  and  a  eucharist 
seem  to  have  been  practiced  by  several  religions,  and 
Epictetus  quotes  the  litany  of  pagan  soothsayers  to 
have  been  Kyrie  Eleison,  which  has  been  adopted  by 
the  Christian  Church  and  is  sung  even  to-day  by  both 
Catholics  and  Protestants. 

Monks  existed  in  India  and  in  Egypt,  and  the  pagan 
priests  of  these  same  countries  shaved  their  heads  or 
wore  the  tonsure.  The  rosary  is  unquestionably  of 
pagan  origin,  while  none  of  these  institutions  are 
Jewish. 


THE  GENTILE  CHARACTER  OF  CHRISTIANITY.     11 

Among  the  religious  tendencies  worked  out  in  the 
minds  of  the  Greek  people  since  the  days  of  Plato, 
there  was  one  which  was  most  powerful — the  idea  of 
monotheism,  and  here  we  have  the  only  point  of  con- 
tact. The  Jews  had  become  the  representatives  of 
monotheism.  In  acknowledging  the  God  of  the  Jews 
as  the  only  true  God,  the  new  faith  adopted  Judaism 
as  its  mother,  but  Judaism  refused  to  recognize  Chris- 
tianity as  its  child,  and  we  think  rightly  so.  The 
strangest  thing  about  it  is  that  the  aversion  is  mutual. 
The  Jews  looked  with  disdain  upon  the  Gentiles,  and 
the  Gentiles  held  the  Jews  in  contempt.  In  Esdras  the 
statement  is  made  repeatedly  that  God  created  the 
world  for  the  sake  of  the  Jews,^  and  there  are  passages 
in  the  Talmud  referring  to  the  Christians  which  ex- 
press the  same  view  in  a  most  severe  form,  while  the 
innumerable  persecutions  which  the  Jews  had  to  suffer 
from  the  hands  of  the  Christians  are  facts  of  history. 

It  is  true  that  Judaism  exercised  an  enormous  influ- 
ence upon  Christianity,  for  from  the  start  its  develop- 
ment took  place  with  constant  reference  to  the  Old 
Testament,  but  the  attitude  of  the  Christian  Church 
was  always  opposed  to  everything  that  was  typically 
Jewish.  The  Church  selected  from  the  Hebrew  Scrip- 
tures what  appealed  to  her  and  interpreted  their  mean- 
ing in  a  way  to  suit  her  own  purpose. 

The  Christians  worship  Jesus  as  the  Christ,  i.  e.,  as 
the  saviour  and  as  the  son  of  the  only  true  God.    The 

*2  Esdras,  vi.  55;  vii.  11. 


12  THE  PLEROMA. 

fact  that  Judaism  was  the  religion  of  Jesus  rendered 
the  connection  between  Judaism  and  Christianity  indis- 
soluble. The  God  of  Jesus  has  become  the  God  of 
Qiristianity,  and  so  his  religion  has  been  regarded  as 
the  root  from  which  Christianity  has  sprung;  but  we 
shall  see  that  this  is  an  error. 


CHAPTER  II. 

THE  OLD  PAGANISM. 

T    ET  US  first  see  what  are  the  main  features  and 
^^  the  mode  of  growth  of  ancient  paganism. 

In  every  Httle  state  of  Greece,  in  every  province  of 
Egypt,  in  every  district  of  Asia,  and  so  far  as  we  can 
see,  also  in  Italy, — yea  even  among  the  Teutons  and 
barbarians  of  the  North,  we  can  trace  stories  of  a  God 
who  walked  on  earth  unknown.  The  stories  of  Thor, 
who  visits  the  humble  as  well  as  the  mighty,  the  rich 
and  the  poor,  and  watches  them  in  their  daily  life, 
leaving  behind  him  punishments  for  the  wicked  and 
blessings  for  the  good,  are  paralleled  in  the  tales  of 
'Thousand  and  One  Nights,"  where  Harun  al  Rashid, 
the  Sultan  or  omnipotent  ruler,  mixes  with  the  people 
incognito  so  as  to  utilize  his  experiences  for  the  dispen- 
sation of  justice  when  these  same  individuals  appeal  to 
him  as  a  judge  in  court.  Similar  stories  are  known 
in  India  and  among  the  pagans  of  almost  every  land. 

The  same  ideas  also  underlie  the  legends  of  mytho- 
logical religion.  In  Egypt,  Osiris,  the  god  of  the  Nile 
and  fertility,  of  agriculture  and  civilization,  lives  as  a 
mortal  man  among  his  people  and  bestows  his  blessings 
on  mankind.  He  is  the  inventor  of  religion,  of  science 
and  the  arts,  and  of  moral  instruction,  but  his  enemies 
conspire  against  him,  they  slay  him  malignantly,  and 


14  THE  PLEROMA. 

he  has  to  pass  down  into  the  land  of  death.  The 
powers  of  evil  seem  to  conquer  the  powers  of  good, 
but  Osiris  does  not  stay  in  the  underworld.  He  is  the 
first  one  to  break  the  bonds  of  death  and  to  reappear 
in  the  domain  of  life.  His  slayers  are  punished  and 
his  kingdom  is  restored  in  Hor  the  Avenger,  his  son 
and  his  divine  reincarnation. 

The  three  divinities,  Osiris,  Isis,  and  Horus,  consti- 
tute the  trinity  worshiped  in  most  temples  of  Egypt; 
and  we  know  that  the  Egyptian  puts  his  hope  of  im- 
mortality in  his  faith  in  Osiris.  The  transfigured  dead 
follow  Osiris  in  his  passage  through  the  land  of  death 
by  identifying  themselves  with  their  leader,  and  this 
identification  finds  expression  in  the  custom  of  assign- 
ing the  name  Osiris  to  each  man  at  his  death  and  com- 
bining it  with  his  own  name.  Like  Osiris  they  die  and 
with  Osiris  they  rise  again  to  renewed  life.  The 
scrolls  of  religious  writings  which  the  Egyptians  placed 
in  the  coffins  of  their  dead,  contain  magic  incantations 
for  the  preservation  of  the  soul.  Scholars  have  com- 
bined the  several  chapters  into  a  book  which  is  com- 
monly called  "The  Book  of  the  Dead" ;  but  according 
to  the  Egyptian  conception  it  ought  to  bear  the  title 
Reu  1J1U  pert  mem  hru,  which  means  "Chapters  of  Com- 
ing Forth  by  Day,"  implying  the  soul's  resurrection 
from  death,  which  is  accomplished  in  a  similar  way  as 
the  rise  of  Osiris,  symbolized  by  the  morning  sun. 

It  is  touching  to  see  in  hymns  and  prayers  the  simple 
faith  of  the  Egyptians  so  much  like  our  own,  and  in 


THE  OLD  PAGANISM.  15 

Spite  of  their  numerous  and  gross  superstitions,  we 
learn  more  and  more  to  appreciate  their  fervor  and 
piety.  We  will  call  attention  especially  to  the  worship 
of  Isis,  called  "Mother  of  God,"  ''our  Lady,"  "the 
Holy  Lady,"  etc.,  terms  which  are  literally  repeated 
afterwards  in  Christianity  with  reference  to  the  Virgin 
Mary. 

We  know  that  the  religion  of  Babylon,  of  Syria,  of 
Phcenicia  and  of  Greece  were  very  similar.  We  know 
that  Marduk  was  a  saviour  god ;  we  know  that  he  died 
and  conquered  death;  that  he  came  to  life  again  and 
entered  his  temple  in  festive  procession ;  that  his  mar- 
riage feast  with  Ishtar  was  celebrated;  and  we  know 
that  the  cyclical  repetition  of  the  festivals  of  Marduk's 
life  constituted  the  Babylonian  calendar,  and  the  same 
is  true  of  other  countries.  In  both  ancient  Babylon  and 
Phoenicia  a  kind  of  Good  Friday  as  well  as  an  Easter 
day  were  celebrated,  and  it  is  noteworthy  that  the  resur- 
rection of  the  god  took  place  three  days  after  his  death. 
A  similar  allusion  is  made  in  the  Katha  Upanishad  of 
distant  India.  It  relates  how  the  soul  has  to  remain 
three  days  in  "the  house  of  death,"  and  so  we  may  con- 
clude that  this  notion  of  the  number  three  and  a  frac- 
tion is  common  to  the  ancient  world  and  dates  back  to 
hoary  antiquity.  We  may  be  assured  that  the  number 
three  and  a  fraction  is  nothing  more  nor  less  than  the 
oldest  approximation  of  a  calculation  of  the  circle, 
representing  any  period  or  cycle.     It  is  the  number  v, 


16  THE  PLEROMA. 

the  importance  of  which  has  been  recognized  even  in 
prehistoric  ages.^ 

In  order  not  to  lose  ourselves  in  details,  we  shall 
refer  the  reader  to  the  mention  of  Tammuz  in  the  Old 
Testament  as  being  wept  for  by  the  women  in  the 
temple,  which  indicates  that  even  the  Israelites  cele- 
brated a  kind  of  Good  Friday,  a  day  of  lamentation  on 
which  the  death  of  the  god  was  commemorated  before 
the  day  of  his  resurrection  which  changed  the  gloom 
of  the  ceremony  into  a  joyous  holiday.  Tammuz  is 
the  god  of  vegetation  who  dies  in  winter  and  is  restored 
to  new  life  in  the  spring. 

Similar  customs  prevailed  in  Syria,  where  the  dying 
god  was  worshiped  under  the  name  of  Adonis,  in 
whose  honor  little  gardens  of  the  quickly  sprouting 
pepper-grass  or  cress  were  planted  in  small  boxes  and 
carried  in  processions. 

In  Tyre  an  analogous  feast  was  celebrated  in  the 
name  of  Melkarth,  which  means  "King,  i.  e.,  Patron 
of  the  City."  Melkarth  is  the  Phoenician  Samson,  and 
we  can  not  doubt  that  in  Israel,  or  rather  in  the  tribe  of 
Dan,  Samson  represented  the  same  idea  and  his  death 
and  resurrection  were  commemorated  in  religious  fes- 
tivals.^ 

"See  the  author's  article  in  The  Monist,  "The  Number  ir 
in  Christian  Prophecy,"  XVI,  415. 

Tor  details  see  the  author's  The  Story  of  Samson  (Chicago: 
Open  Court  Publishing  Co.,  1907).  Note  especially  how  it  must 
have  happened  that  the  story  of  Samson's  resurrection  was 
omitted  from  the  Biblical  report  and  the  story  left  in  the  shape 
in  which  we  now  have  it,  a  torso. 


THE  OLD  PAGANISM.  17 

The  various  reports  of  the  different  countries  in 
Asia  Minor  indicate  that  the  same  ceremonies  prevailed 
everywhere,  even  also  in  the  North,  for  we  must  re- 
member that  the  word  Easter  is  a  Teutonic  word  and 
that  the  festival  of  the  goddess  Ostara  (compare 
Ostern,  the  German  "Easter")  has  been  identified  with 
the  Christian-Jewish  passover  on  account  of  the  many 
resemblances  which  rendered  the  two  synonymous. 

Most  conspicuous  is  the  similarity  between  Mithras 
and  Christ.  Although  nothing  is  known  of  the  death 
and  resurrection  of  Mithras,  there  are  otherwise  many 
striking  parallels,  for,  like  Christ,  Mithras  is  the  medi- 
ator between  God  (Ahura  Mazda)  and  mankind,  the 
vicegerent  of  God  on  earth ;  he  is  the  judge  on  the  day 
of  resurrection;  he  is  born  of  a  virgin  and  is  called 
"Righteousness  Incarnate."  He  is  the  saviour  of  man- 
kind and  he  leads  the  good  in  their  battle  against  the 
hosts  of  Ahriman,  the  evil  one.  It  is  certainly  not  an 
accident  that  the  Mithraists  celebrated  a  sacrament 
which  Justin  Martyr  calls  "the  same"  as  the  Christian 
Lord's  Supper. 

The  Mithraist  eucharist  is  apparently  a  pre-Christian 
institution,  and  the  same  or  a  very  similar  ceremony 
existed  in  the  ancient  Mazdaism  of  Zoroaster,  and  we 
are  told  in  the  sacred  books  of  Mazdaism  that  the  holy 
drink,  haoma,  and  the  consecrated  cake,  myasda,  were 
taken  for  the  purpose  of  nourishing  the  resurrection 
body.    It  seems  not  unlikely  that  the  Christian  "Lord's 


18  THE  PLEROMA. 

Supper"  has  originated  under  Persian  influence  and 
that  the  word  "mass"  (Latin  missa)  is  the  same  as 
the  Persian  myazda,  which  corresponds  to  the  Hebrew 
ma^^a,  the  sacred  unleavened  bread.'^ 

We  will  add  one  further  comment  upon  a  doctrine 
which  has  become  very  dear  to  Christians  and  is  gen- 
erally regarded  as  typical  of  the  Christian  faith,  but 
which  is  nevertheless  common  to  all  Gentile  religions, 
being  glaringly  absent  in  Judaism  only.     We  refer  to 
the  doctrine  of  the  trinity.     Although  the  idea  was 
obliterated  in  Greece  and  Rome  during  the  classical 
period,  it  nevertheless  existed.    We  know,  for  instance, 
that  in  ancient  Rome  a  temple  on  the  Capitoline  Hill 
was    devoted    to    the   trinity    of    Jupiter,    Juno   and 
Minerva,  a  triad  worshiped  everywhere  in  Etruria  un- 
der the  names  of  Tinia,  Thalna  and  Menrva.^    Other 
well-known  trinities  were  taught,  as  in  Egypt,  Osiris, 
Isis  and   Horus;  in  Babylon,   Anu,   Bel  and  Ea ;  in 
India,  Brahma,  Vishnu  and  Shiva ;  and  in  Buddhism  in 
the  doctrine  of  the  Triratna,  the  three  gems,  the  Bud- 
dha, the  Dharma  and  the  Sangha. 

Similarities  between  Christianity  and  paganism  are 
more  frequent  than  is  commonly  supposed.  Prof.  Law- 
rence H.  Mills,  the  great  authority  in  Zend  literature, 

'See  the  writer's  article  "The  Food  of  Life  and  the  Sacra- 
ment," Part  II,  The  Monist,  X,  343.  Myazda  originally  signi- 
fies only  the  meat  of  the  consecrated  cow  placed  on  the  wafer 
(draona)  but  the  name  may  easily  have  been  extended  to  the 
whole  offering. 

'Compare  Encyclop.  Brit.,  Vol.  XX,  p.  824,  s.  v.  "Rome," 
where  the  fate  of  this  temple  is  related. 


THE  OLD  PAGANISM.  19 

has  written  an  article  entitled  "Our  Own  Religion  in 
Ancient  Persia,"  but  other  religions  as  well  contain 
ideas  which  have  always  been  regarded  as  typically 
Christian.  We  will  here  mention  only  one  more  of 
these  because  it  is  not  limited  to  one  religion  but  re- 
peats itself  almost  everywhere.  It  is  the  doctrine  of 
God  as  the  Word  or  the  Logos  which  can  be  found  in 
China  and  India,  in  Persia,  in  Greece  where  it  is  devel- 
oped by  neo-Platonism,  and  in  ancient  Egypt.  Plutarch 
calls  Osiris  the  Word^  and  mentions  the  existence  of 
the  books  of  Hermes  which  became  the  sacred  scrip- 
tures of  the  worshipers  of  Hermes  Trismegistos,  also 
called  Poimander,  which  presumably  means  "the  shep- 
herd of  men,"  and  which  was  a  mythological  figure 
very  much  like  the  Christ  ideal  of  the  Christians.^^ 

»r>^  I  si  et  Osiri,  Chap.  LXI. 

"See   also   the   author's  "Anubis,    Seth   and   Christ"  in    The 
Open  Court,  XV,  65. 


CHAPTER  III. 

PAGANISM  REDIVIVUS. 

A  UGUSTINE'S  saying  that  Christianity  is  not  a 
*■  ^  new-fangled  thing  but  that  it  existed  from  the 
beginning  of  mankind,  is  not  to  be  taken  in  a  general 
sense  but  must  be  understood  literally.  It  reads  in  its 
original  as  follows : 

"Res  ipsa,  quee  nunc  religio  Christiana  nuncupatur, 
erat  apud  antiques,  nee  defuit  ab  initio  generis  humani, 
quousque  Christus  veniret  in  carnem,  unde  vera  religio, 
quae  iam  erat,  coepit  appellari  Christiana." 

We  translate  literally : 

"The  very  thing  which  now  is  called  the  Christian 
religion  existed  among  the  ancients,  nor  was  it  absent 
in  the  beginning  of  the  human  race  before  Christ  came 
into  the  flesh,  since  when  the  true  religion  which  al- 
ready existed  began  to  be  called  Christian." 

We  must  ask  the  question,  What  constitutes  Chris- 
tianity in  the  opinion  of  a  man  like  St.  Augustine? 

St.  Augustine  would  presumably  find  no  fault  with 
the  following  answer: 

Christianity  means  the  belief  in  Christ  as  the  son  of 
God,  the  god-man,  the  sinless  man,  the  saviour,  the 
mediator  between  God  and  men,  the  divine  teacher, 
the  king,  the  hero,  the  ideal  man,  the  martyr  of  the 
reat  cause  of  salvation,  he  who  struggles  for  mankind. 


g: 


PAGANISM  REDIVIVUS.  21 

yet  succumbs  to  the  intrigues  of  the  enemies  of  justice. 
Christ  dies  on  the  cross  and  descends  into  hell,  to  the 
place  of  death  and  the  powers  of  evil,  but  hell  can  not 
hold  him.  He  breaks  the  gates  of  hell  and  thereby 
opens  the  way  to  life  for  his  brother  men.  He  is  there- 
fore regarded  as  the  leader,  the  firstling,"  and  he  who 
clings  to  Christ  in  faith  will  follow  him  through  death 
to  life  and  will  partake  of  his  glorification  and  bliss. 
Christ  is  now  enthroned  at  the  right  hand  of  God 
whence  he  will  return  to  earth  as  a  judge  of  mankind 
at  the  end  of  the  world. 

What  of  all  this  is  contained  in  Judaism  ?  Judaism 
knows  nothing  of  any  of  these  doctrines ;  on  the  con- 
trary it  repudiates  them.  The  idea  that  God  should 
have  a  son  would  have  been  an  unspeakable  blasphemy 
to  a  Jewish  rabbi  of  the  time  of  Christ. 

The  Jews  expected  a  Messiah,  not  a  saviour.  CTiris- 
tians  have  identified  the  two  terms,  but  they  are  as 
heterogeneous  as,  e.  g.,  a  henchman  is  different  from 
a  physician.  The  Messiah  was  expected  to  restore  the 
kingdom  of  David  and  take  revenge  upon  the  Gentiles 
that  had  oppressed  the  Jews.  An  echo  of  these  hopes 
still  rings  through  the  Revelation  of  St.  John  the 
Divine  (Revelations  xii),  which  we  shall  quote  fur- 
ther on. 

It  is  said  that  the  Jews  did  not  understand  the  spir- 

"The  Giristian  term  anapx^  i.  c,  "firstling,"  translated 
"first  fruits"  in  I  Cor.  xv.  20,  sounds  like  an  echo  of  a  more  an- 
cient pagan  expression. 


22  THE  PLEROMA. 

itual  meaning  of  their  prophecies.  Is  it  not  but  a 
poor  makeshift  to  explain  to  them  that  the  kingdom  of 
Judah  does  not  mean  either  their  country  or  their 
nationahty,  but  the  Church,  not  even  the  Jewish  Church 
but  the  Gentile  Church?  Bear  in  mind  that  the  con- 
gregation of  Jewish  Christians  did  not  last  long  and 
that  the  Gentile  Church  was  as  hostile  to  the  Jews  as 
ever  Assyrian,  Babylonian,  Syrian  or  Roman  conquer- 
ors had  been.  We  might  as  well  say  that  the  prophe- 
cies for  the  restoration  of  Poland  were  fulfilled  when 
the  bulk  of  Poland  was  incorporated  into  Russia,  and 
when  the  Czar  added  to  his  many  other  titles  that  of 
Rex  Poloniae. 

The  idea  of  a  saviour  is  purely  pagan ;  it  was  so  little 
Jewish  that  even  the  very  word  was  unknown  to  the 
Jews.  There  is  no  Hebrew  word  to  correspond  to  the 
Greek  term  sotcr,^^  the  Latin  salvator,  the  Zend  sao~ 
shyant,  the  German  Heiland,  the  French  saiiveur,  and 
the  English  saviour}^ 

In  the  time  of  Christ  the  inhabitants  of  the  Roman 
Empire  looked  for  a  saviour  who  would  bring  back  to 
them  the  blessings  of  the  Golden  Age,  and  when  order 
was  restored  after  the  civil  wars,  Augustus  was  hailed 

"Compare  the  author's  article  "Christ  and  Christians,"  an  in- 
quiry into  the  original  meaning  of  the  terms  in  The  Open  Court 
xvii,  pp.   110  ff.  especially  p.   115. 

The  Hebrew  words  Yehoshua  (deliverer),  goel  (avenger), 
raphe  (healer  or  physician),  and  messiah  (the  anointed  one), 
are  not  exact  equivalents  and  are  never  used  in  the  sense  of 
the  Greek  sotcr   saviour. 


PAGANISM  REDIVIVUS.  23 

in  official  inscriptions  as  this  saviour.    The  very  word 

atigusHis  is  not  a  name  but  a  title.    It  is  translated  into 

Greek  scbastos,  which  means    "the  lofty  one,"   "the 

auspicious  one,"  "the  venerable  one."     It  not  merely 

possesses  a  political  but  also  and  mainly  a  religious 

significance  and  may  be  compared  to  the  Buddhist  term 

Tathagata,  the  Blessed  One.    A  remarkable  instance  of 

the  hope  for  the  appearance  of  a  saviour  and  the  return 

of  the  Golden  Age  which  then  generally  prevailed,  is 

Virgil's  fourth  eclogue,  written  in  the  year  40  B.  C, 

which  has  frequently  been  regarded  by  Christians  as  a 

prophecy  of  the  advent  of  Christ.^* 

There  is  scarcely  any  Christian  doctrine  which  can 

be  reconciled  with  Judaism,  either  in  letter  or  spirit. 

The  trinity  is  certainly  incompatible  with  the  rigor  of 

Jewish  monotheism,  and  the  Christian  sacrament  called 

the  Lord's  Supper  is  a  horror  and  an  abomination  to 

any  one  reared  in  the  spirit  of  the  Old  Testament.^' 

The  eating  of  flesh  and  the  drinking  of  blood,  even  if 

the  act  is  purely  symbolical    (as  Calvin  and  Zwingli 

interpret  it  to  be),  would  have  been  a  disgusting  idea 

to  a  Jew  to  whom  a  dead  body  was  unclean  and  who 

was  forbidden  to  drink  blood.    And  the  Church  as  well 

as  the  German  reformer,  Martin  Luther,  teaches  that 

thj  bread  and  wine  of  the  sacrament  arc  the  real  flesh 

and  blood  of  Christ;  they  have  been  changed  by  a 

"See  "The  Christ  Ideal  and  the  Golden  Age"  in  The  Open 
Court  for  June  1908,  p.  328. 

"See  "Food  of  Life,"  etc.,  Monist,  X,  p.  376. 


24  THE  PLEROMA. 

mystical  act  of  transubstantiation.  How  is  it  possible 
that  the  institution  of  these  ceremonies  can  have  been 
derived  from  the  Jews? 

We  know  that  St.  Paul  celebrated  the  Lord's  Sup- 
per, and  there  is  good  reason  to  believe  that  he  insti- 
tuted it,  and  we  may  grant  that  St.  Paul  was  a  Jew. 
But  he  was  born  in  Tarsus.  He  must  have  imbibed  in 
his  childhood  and  youth  many  pagan  notions.  How 
un-Jewish  he  was  in  his  convictions  appears  from  the 
fact  that  he  regarded  the  Mosaic  law  as  of  mere  tem- 
porary value.  To  be  sure  he  believed  it  to  be  ordained 
by  God,  but  having  been  fulfilled  once  he  deemed  it  no 
longer  binding.  Think  of  the  lack  of  logic  in  his  argu- 
ment that  a  law  if  but  once  thoroughly  obeyed,  may 
thenceforth  be  set  aside!  But  his  explanation  suited 
his  Gentile  converts  and  it  has  been  accepted  without 
the  slightest  scruple  by  generation  after  generation — 
not  among  the  Jews  but  among  the  Gentiles. 

Parallels  to  the  Christian  conception  of  the  eucharist 
can  be  pointed  out  in  the  sacraments  of  many  pagan 
religions,  but  scarcely  in  the  institutions  of  the  syna- 
gogue. The  very  spirit  and  the  mode  of  its  celebration 
are  absolutely  un-Jewish. 


PRE-CHRISTIAN  GNOSTICISM 

THE  BLOOM  PRECEDING 

THE  FRUITAGE  OF  CHRISTIANITY. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

THE  PERIOD  OF  TRANSITION. 

WE  CALL  Christianity  the  grandchild  of  paganism 
because  there  is  an  intermediate  hnk  between 
Christianity  and  the  ancient  polytheistic  paganism  of 
Gr?eco-Roman  mythology.  Ancient  paganism  repre- 
sents a  stage  in  the  religious  development  of  mankind 
which  has  become  typical  for  all  religions  characterized 
by  being  limited  to  well-defined  boundaries.  These 
boundaries  were  very  narrow  in  the  beginning.  There 
were  state  religions  in  Athens,  in  Sparta,  in  Ephesus, 
in  Syracuse,  in  Rome,  in  the  several  cities  of  Egypt, 
in  Tyre  and  Sidon,  in  the  great  centers  of  population  in 
Babylonia,  Assyria,  Phoenicia,  etc.,  and  the  mass  of 
people  in  each  district  came  little  in  contact  with  their 
neighbors.  But  as  trade  and  commerce  expanded, 
people  of  different  cities  became  acquainted  with  each 
other  and  with  their  several  religious  views.  The  dif- 
ferent legends  were  retold  in  foreign  countries  and 
persisted  there,  so  far  as  it  was  possible,  side  by  side 
W'ith  the  native  religion.  We  know  that  much  confu- 
sion originated  in  this  way;  e.  g.,  the  genealogies  of  the 
gods  were  different  in  different  cities,  and  so  were  the 
marriage  relations  between  gods  and  goddesses.  Thus 
in  Greece  when  the  different  local  traditions  were  com- 
bined and  systematized,  the  conflicting  traditions  were 


26  THE  PLEROMA. 

adjusted  as  well  as  could  be  done  in  the  haphazard  way 
in  which  the  religious  development  took  place.  It  is  in 
this  shape  that  Greek  mythology  has  been  preserved  in 
the  well-known  poem  of  Hesiod,  and  students  of 
classic  lore  are  sometimes  puzzled  by  the  many  contra- 
dictions. 

It  frequently  happened  that  the  same  god  or  goddess 
was  called  by  different  names  in  different  localities.  In 
one  country  one  feature  was  developed,  and  in  another, 
others ;  and  the  legends  told  of  them  were  so  modified 
that  when  they  were  retold  and  compared,  the  several 
devotees  no  longer  recognized  that  these  figures  had 
once  been  the  same.  So  we  know  that  Astartc,  Aphro- 
dite or  Venus  develops  one  feature  of  the  great  female 
divinity,  while  Hera,  Athene  and  Artemis  develop  oth- 
ers. The  Babylonian  Ishtar  combined  all  of  them  and 
yet  the  Greek  worshiper  saw  no  resemblance  between 
Artemis  and  Athene.  The  same  is  true  of  such  hero- 
ines as  Danae,  Andromeda,  lo,  and  others.  This  state 
of  affairs  naturally  tended  to  obscure  the  issues. 

A  similar  state  of  confusion  existed  in  Egypt,  where 
we  are  unable  to  present  a  perfectly  consistent  mythol- 
ogy of  the  popular  gods.  The  official  priests  in  ancient 
On,  or  as  the  Greeks  called  it,  Heliopolis,  made  an 
attempt  to  settle  all  disputes  and  to  systematize  Egyp- 
tian religion,  but  their  creed  does  not  solve  all  difficul- 
ties, nor  does  it  help  us  to  bring  order  into  the  chaos 
of  previous  times. 

It  is  obvious  that  the  religious  development  of  man- 


THE   PERIOD   OF   TRANSITION.  27 

kind  could  not  halt  at  this  stage  of  a  unification  of  the 
mythologies  of  the  several  nations.  When  the  differ- 
ences of  nationality  and  language  ceased  to  constitute 
dividing  lines,  the  problem  of  adjustment  presented 
itself  in  a  renewed  form,  and  this  happened  in  the  his- 
tory of  the  antique  world  through  the  conquest  of  Asia 
by  Alexander  the  Great. 

On  the  ruins  of  the  Persian  Empire  a  number  of 
Greek  kingdoms  were  established.  The  old  barriers 
that  had  separated  the  East  and  the  West  had  been 
removed,  and  a  new  period  originated  in  which  Eastern 
lore  became  known  in  the  West,  and  Western  views 
superseded  and  modified  the  traditions  of  the  hoary 
Eastern  civilization.  This  Hellenistic  period  affected 
religion  more  than  is  commonly  known,  and  the  period 
from  Alexander's  overthrow  of  the  Persian  Empire  to 
the  time  of  Christ  was  the  preparatory  stage  for  the 
formation  of  a  new  religion  that  was  destined  to  be  the 
religion  of  the  Roman  Empire. 

The  exchange  of  thought  that  took  place  between  the 
East  and  the  West  discredited  the  belief  in  the  tradi- 
tional gods.  The  old  priesthood  lost  its  hold  on  the 
people,  and  complaints  of  infidelity  were  heard  every- 
where; but  the  cause  was  not  (as  it  was  then  thought) 
a  decay,  but  rather  an  expanse  of  the  religious  spirit. 

Even  before  the  conquest  of  Alexander  the  Great  we 
notice  a  strong  influence  of  Eastern  religion  upon 
ancient  Hellas  which  found  expression  not  only  in 
philosophy   (e.   g.,   Pythagoreanism)   but  also  in  re- 


28  THE  PLEROMA. 

ligious  institutions,  mainly  in  the  mysteries  such  as 
were  celebrated  at  Eleusis  and  in  other  cities.  They 
fascinated  the  Greek  mind,  for  they  taught  more  plainly 
than  the  ancient  myths  the  eternal  repetition  of  the  life 
of  nature,  deriving  therefrom  an  evidence  for  the  im- 
mortality of  the  soul,  the  promise  of  which  was  held 
out  to  the  initiates  in  dramatic  performances  and  sug- 
gested through  allegories.  We  know  that  ears  of 
wheat,  phallic  symbols,  and  other  emblems  of  regenera- 
tion played  an  important  part  in  the  mysteries.  There 
were  ablutions  or  baptisms,  the  lighting  of  torches, 
the  blindfolding  of  the  initiated  and  the  removal  of 
the  veil,  exhibiting  a  vision  of  deep  significance;  there 
were  trials  and  tribulations  finding  their  climax  in  a 
descent  into  the  underworld,  and  finally  a  great  rejoic- 
ing at  the  conquest  of  life  over  death. 

The  mysteries  were  celebrated  in  honor  of  Orpheus 
and  Eurydice,  or  of  Demeter  and  Persephone,  or  of 
Eros  and  Psyche,  or  of  Dionysos,  the  liberator,  enter- 
ing in  triumphal  procession  riding  on  an  ass,  and  all 
of  them  proclaimed  the  doctrine  of  immortality. 

In  their  later  stages  of  development,  the  mysteries 
incorporated  more  and  more  a  great  moral  earnestness, 
for  we  find  purity  of  life  and  freedom  from  guilt  de- 
manded as  the  most  indispensable  condition  for  par- 
ticipation in  the  bliss  that  was  to  be  gained  through 
initiation. 

The  beginning  of  the  Horatian  ode  Integer  vitae 
scelerisque  purus,  which  means  "blameless  in  life  and 


THE   PERIOD   OF  TRANSITION.  29 

free  from  guilt,"  is  probably  an  echo  of  the  religious 
sentiment  which  pervades  the  mysteries  of  ancient 
Greece. 

To  what  extent  the  spirit  of  the  mysteries  entered 
into  the  fabric  of  Christianity  appears  from  the  fact 
that  St.  Paul  uses  their  most  significant  terms,  such  as 
"mystery,  initiate  (tcletos  or  teleiotheis) ,  perfection  or 
consecration,  divine  presence  (paroiisia).  The  his- 
toric connection  must  have  been  very  close,  for  we  find 
representations  of  Eros  and  Psyche  together  with  the 
Good  Shepherd,  and  the  oldest  pictures  of  Christ  in 
the  Catacombs  of  Rome  show  him  as  Orpheus  with 
lyre  in  hand. 

We  must  remember  that  in  the  ancient  mysteries  the 
god  (Tammuz,  Adonis,  Osiris,  Dionysos,  etc.)  was  the 
first  to  acquire  salvation  through  his  passion  and  death, 
and  the  partakers  of  the  mysteries  were  initiated  by 
witnessing  the  dramatic  representation  of  his  fate.  We 
find  references  to  this  in  the  Epistles,  as  for  instance 
(Heb.  ii.  lo)  :  "For  it  behooved  him  to  be  initiated 
{teleiosaiy  through  suffering."  The  leader  in  the  cere- 
mony {archegosY  is  here  translated  in  the  Authorized 
Version  as  "captain."  In  another  passage  Christ  is  said 
to  have  taken  the  highest  degree  of  initiation,  teleiotheis 
egeneto^  (Heb.  v.  9).  As  purity  of  life  was  made  the 
indispensable  condition  of  the  mysteries,  so  in  Chris - 

VeActwcrat. 
2 »  ^ 

VeXetw^cts   dyevcTO. 


30  THE  PLEROMA. 

tianity.    "Charity  is  the  bond  of  our  consecration"  {fes 
teleiotetos,^  translated,  "of  our  perfectness).^  (Col.  iii. 

14). 

All  this  infiltration  of  Oriental  customs  and  relig- 
ions into  Western  countries  took  place  before  the 
expedition  of  Alexander  the  Great.  It  would  have 
continued  even  if  Alexander  had  not  crossed  the  Hel- 
lespont, but  here,  as  in  many  other  cases,  a  catastrophe 
hastened  the  historical  process  that  was  slowly  pre- 
paring itself  in  the  minds  of  the  people. 

The  process  of  the  formation  of  modern  England  is 
similar,  and  in  this  respect  we  may  compare  Alexan- 
der's expedition  to  the  invasion  of  William  the  Con- 
queror into  England.  Norman  words  and  Norman 
civilization  had  invaded  the  Saxon  kingdom  long  be- 
fore the  Norman  conquest,  and  might  have  produced 
by  a  slow  and  peaceful  process  some  kind  of  modern 
English,  such  as  we  have  it  now.  But  the  Norman 
conquest  was  a  catastrophe  in  which  the  factors  at  vt'ork 
gained  a  free  play  by  an  overthrow  of  the  retarding 
conservatism  and  thus  hastened  the  process  that  was 
actually  going  on.  The  old  Saxon  England  could  not 
have  remained  isolated  and  would  have  modified  its 
institutions  as  well  as  its  language  under  the  influence 
of  continental  Europe.  With  or  without  the  Norman 
conquest,  its  destiny  was  in  all  main  features  fore- 
ordained and  the  same  law  of  history  holds  good  in 

"Compare  also  Heb.  xii.  2;  I  Cor.  ii.  6ff. 


THE   PERIOD   OF  TRANSITION.  31 

Other  cases,  especially  in  the  formation  of  the  religion 
of  Europe  which  we  call  Christianity. 

When  the  barriers  of  the  different  countries  broke 
down  in  the  time  of  Alexander  the  Great,  a  religious 
movement  spread  during  the  Hellenistic  period  over 
the  Mediterranean  countries  which  received  no  definite 
name,  but,  in  its  religio-philosophical  form,  may  best 
be  characterized  as  pre-Christian  gnosticism.  While 
gnosticism  is  generally  treated  as  a  phase  in  the  devel- 
opment of  Christianity,  we  insist  that  it  existed  before 
Christianity.  Its  beginnings  lie  in  the  first  century 
before  Christ  and  it  reached  its  maturity  before  Paul 
wrote  his  Epistles. 

Biblical  scholars  have  repeatedly  called  attention  to 
the  fact  that  the  Epistles  of  St.  Paul  abound  in  the 
most  important  terms  of  gnostic  philosophy.  We  will 
mention  here  only  such  gnostic  notions  as  the  doctrine 
of  three  bodies,  the  corporeal  body,  the  psychical  body 
and  the  spiritual  body;  the  ideas  of  the  pleroma,  the 
fulfilment  or  the  fulness  of  the  time,  of  aeons;  and 
there  are  some  others  all  of  which  are  presupposed  as 
known  to  the  congregations  whom  the  Apostle  ad- 
dresses. He  uses  these  terms  freely  as  known  quanti- 
ties, and  nowhere  deems  it  necessary  to  explain  their 
meaning.  This  proves  that  his  Epistles  represent  the 
conclusion  of  a  prior  movement,  the  development  of 
gnosticism,  as  much  as  the  beginning  of  a  new  one, 
the  formation  of  the  Church  which  is  a  definite  indi- 
vidualization of  the  preceding  gnosticism. 


32  THE  PLEROMA. 

It  was  a  natural  consequence  that  the  gnostic  sects 
which  preserved  some  of  the  original  and  tentative,  or 
we  may  say  cruder  types  of  the  movement,  were  repu- 
diated as  heretical,  and  Church  historians,  ignorant  of 
the  fact  that  they  represent  an  older  phase  than  Chris- 
tianity, regarded  them  as  degenerate  rebels.  We  may 
well  assume  that  some  of  the  later  gnostics  were 
Christian  heretics,  i.  e.,  they  were  unorthodox  members 
of  the  Church,  but  assuredly  not  all,  and  we  have  reason 
to  believe  that  not  a  few  of  the  later  gnostics  such  as 
the  Manichseans  had  developed  on  independent  lines 
religious  notions  that  were  not  derived  from,  but  were 
parallel  to,  Christianity. 

One  thing  is  sure,  that  the  appearance  of  Christianity 
cleared  the  situation  at  once.  So  far  the  movement 
had  developed  among  Jews  and  Gentiles  around  various 
centers  with  general  tendencies,  all  verging  in  the  same 
direction.  The  world  was  in  a  state  of  fermentation 
and  the  idea  that  the  saviour  had  come  acted  like  a 
reagent  which  caused  the  turbid  ingredients  to  settle. 
To  use  another  allegory  we  may  say  that  pre-Christian 
gnosticism  was  like  a  liquid  ready  for  crystallization, 
as  for  instance  a  cup  of  water  chilled  much  below  the 
freezing  point.  The  walls  of  the  vessel  being  smooth, 
the  water  does  not  crystallize,  but  as  soon  as  a  straw 
is  dipped  into  the  water  a  point  of  attachment  is  given 
around  wdiich  the  ice  forms  and  the  water  of  the  whole 
cup  freezes  with  great  rapidity.  When  St.  Paul 
preached  the  Gospel  of  Jesus  Christ,  a  definite  issue 


THE  PERIOD  OF  TRANSITION.  33 

was  raised  which  could  not  be  ignored,  and  forced  all 
gnostics  to  take  issue  with  it.  The  hazy  and  vague  con- 
ception of  a  Christ  appeared  here  actualized  in  Jesus 
as  a  tangible  personality  which  had  either  to  be  re- 
jected or  accepted. 

All  minds  of  a  religious  nature  were  full  of  expect- 
ancy and  in  the  circles  of  Jewish  gnostics  the  expected 
saviour  had  already  been  identified  with  the  Messiah 
and  was  called  Christ,  The  term  occurs  frequently  in 
the  Solomonic  psalms  vvhich  were  sung  as  hymns  in 
the  synagogue  of  Alexandria  in  the  first  century  B.  C. 
So  we  see  that  a  vague  notion  as  to  the  nature  of  the 
Christ  existed  long  before  Paul  had  come  to  the  con- 
clusion that  Jesus  was  he.  In  the  New  Testament, 
mention  is  made  of  an  Alexandrian  Jew,  by  name  Apol- 
los,  a  gnostic  teacher  who  was  well  versed  in  expound- 
ing the  scriptures  and  knew  all  about  "the  Lord,"  but 
he  had  not  yet  heard  of  Jesus.  A  few  lines  in  the  Acts 
of  the  Apostles  (xviii,  24-25)  throw  a  flood  of  light 
on  the  situation.    They  read  thus : 

"And  a  certain  Jew  named  Apollos,  born  at  Alexan- 
dria, an  eloquent  man,  and  mighty  in  the  scriptures, 
came  to  Ephesus.  This  man  was  instructed  in  the  way 
of  the  Lord;  and  being  fervent  in  the  spirit,  he  spake 
and  taught  diligently  the  things  of  the  Lord,  knowing 
only  the  baptism  of  John." 

Apollos  was  converted  to  the  belief  of  St.  Paul,  as  is 
stated  in  verse  26 :  "And  he  began  to  speak  boldly  in 
the  synagogue :  whom,  when  Aquila  and  Priscilla  had 


34  THE  PLEROMA. 

heard,  they  took  him  unto  them,  and  expounded  unto 
him  the  way  of  God  more  perfectly."  The  conversion 
of  Apollos  consisted  simply  in  this,  that  henceforth 
when  he  expounded  "the  way  of  the  Lord"  he  identified 
the  Lord  with  Jesus,  as  we  read  in  verse  28 :  "For  he 
mightily  convinced  the  Jews,  and  that  publickly,  shew- 
ing by  the  scriptures  that  Jesus  was  Christ." 

>!<  ^  ;Jj 

Of  Gnostic  sects  we  will  mention  the  Zabians,  the 
Ophites,  and  the  Simonians,  all  of  which  are  pre- 
Christian,  although  we  know  them  mainly  in  later 
forms  of  their  development,  or  from  the  polemical 
literature  of  Christian  authors. 


CHAPTER  V. 

THE  GNOSTIC  MOVEMENT. 
MAND.'EANS  AND  ZABIANS. 

A  N  OLD  form  of  g-nosticism  which  had  its  home 
^  ■^  in  Babylon  and  is  still  in  existence,  is  the  religion 
of  the  Mandseans  who  worship  as  their  saviour  a  per- 
sonification of  the  gnosis  under  the  name  Manda 
d'Hajje,  the  Enlightenment  of  Life.  Remnants  of  this 
sect  still  exist  in  the  swamp  districts  of  Mesopotamia 
and  in  Persian  Khusistan.  They  claim  to  be  Zubba, 
i.  e.,  Zabians,^  or  "Baptizers,"  whereby  they  mean  to 
establish  an  historical  connection  with  the  disciples  of 
John  the  Baptist.  Though  this  claim  has  been  sus- 
pected of  being  invented  to  gain  the  respect  and  tolera- 
tion of  the  Mohammedan  authorities,  it  seems  not 
improbable  that  the  Zabian  or  Baptizer  sect  in  Palestine 
in  the  first  century  before  the  Christian  era  must  be 
regarded  as  a  kindred  movement  among  the  poorer 
classes  of  the  Jews,  for  the  Zabian  creed  bears  many 
resemblances  to  the  gnosticism  of  the  educated  people 
of  Asia  Minor  and  Alexandria. 

The  great  prophet  of  the  Zabians  in  Palestine  was 
John,  surnamed  "the  Baptizer,"  or  as  we  now  say, 
"the  Baptist."     He  was  one  of  their  leaders,  perhaps 


36  THE  PLEROMA. 

their  chief  leader,  in  the  times  of  Christ,  but  we  need 
not  for  that  reason  assume  that  he  was  the  founder 
of  the  sect,  for  the  Zabians  counted  many  adherents 
outside  of  Palestine,  in  Samaria  as  well  as  Asia  Minor, 
at  the  time  when  tlie  apostles  began  to  preach  the  Gos- 
pel of  Jesus.  They  were  called  disciples'  and  were  fre- 
quently referred  to  in  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles.  They 
celebrated  the  first  day  of  the  week  which  is  dedicated 
to  the  sun,  and  is  the  same  day  which  the  Mithraists 
celebrated  as  the  day  of  Mithras,  the  Lord,  the  Invin- 
cible One,  the  Sun. 

In  another  passage,  the  disciples  are  mentioned  as 
coming  together  to  break  bread  in  common,  which, 
without  doing  any  violence  to  the  words,  is  to  be  inter- 
preted as  a  kind  of  Agape  or  love-meal,  one  of  the 
forms  in  which  the  Eucharist  was  celebrated. 

From  these  scattered  statements,  we  may  assume  that 
''the  disciples  of  St.  John  the  Baptist"  is  a  New  Testa- 
ment name  given  to  a  sect,  which  existed  at  the  time 
of  Christ  and  probably  long  before  John  the  Baptist, 
and  had  spread  not  only  over  Palestine  but  also  over 
Asia  Minor,  and  that  its  original  home  was  not  among 
the  Jews  but  among  the  Babylonians. 

The  religion  of  these  disciples  was  one  of  the  fore- 
runners of  Christianity  and  it  contained  features  which 
were  preserved  as  Christian  institutions,  the  main  one 
of  them  being  the  sacrament  of  baptism. 


THE  GNOSTIC  MOVEMENT.  37 

When  we  read  the  passages  referring  to  John  the 
Baptist  in  the  Gospel,  we  are  involuntarily  under  the 
impression  that  they  were  written  to  gain  converts 
among  the  Zabians.  No  doubt  that  many  Zabians  were 
gained  for  Christianity,  but  large  numbers  kept  aloof 
and  fortified  themselves  against  further  inroads  of 
Christian  proselytism  by  an  intense  hatred  which  shows 
itself  in  the  sacred  books  of  the  Mandseans. 

In  their  complicated  system,  Manda  d'Hajje  is  again 
and  again  incarnated  for  the  sake  of  salvation,  his 
visible  image  on  earth  is  called  Hibil,  and  he  appeared 
last  in  John  the  Baptist,  called  Yahya.  This  Yahya 
baptized  Yishu  M'shiha  (i.  e.,  Jesus),  a  false  Messiah. 
To  remedy  the  mistake,  Anush  'Uthra,  a  younger 
brother  of  Hibil,  came  down  to  earth,  and  while  Yahya 
was  slain  by  the  Jews,  the  false  prophet  was  crucified. 
Then  Anush  'Uthra  punished  the  Jews  by  the  destruc- 
tion of  Jerusalem  and  the  dispersion  of  the  nation. 

The  Mand^an  religion  is  an  extremely  complicated 
system  which  in  its  present  form  bristles  with  polemics 
against  Christianity  and  Mohammedanism,  but  there 
can  be  no  doubt  that  the  nucleus  of  this  queer  faith  in 
its  main  tenets  is  derived  from  ancient  Babylonian 
sources,  and  many  of  its  points  of  resemblance  to 
Christianity  must  be  explained  as  parallel  formations. 

If  the  religious  tenor  of  a  religion  is  best  known 
from  the  hymns  which  the  devotees  sing,  we  must  look 
upon  Mandseism  as  a  Babylonian  faith  which  had 
broadened  by  the  acquisition  of  the  knowledge  of  the 


38  THE  PLEROMA. 

age  as  it  was  imported  into  Mesopotamia  from  the  east, 
i.  e.,  Iran  and  India;  the  extreme  west,  Hellas  and  also 
Asia  Minor;  and  from  the  southwest,  Egypt,  Palestine 
and  Syria.  The  foundation  remained  the  same,  the 
world-conception  of  ancient  Babylon,  as  modified  by 
Persian  monotheism,  now  commonly  called  Mazdaism 
or  Zoroastrianism.  The  prayers  of  the  Mandaeans  re- 
tain the  ring  of  the  ancient  Babylonian  hymns. 

For  all  we  know  it  is  not  impossible  that  the  Man- 
daean  religion  originated  under  Indian  influence  and 
the  word  manda,  which  corresponds  to  the  Greek  term 
gnosis,  i.  e.,  cognition,  knowledge,  or  enlightenment, 
may  be  a  translation  of  the  Buddhist  hodhi. 

OPHITES    OR    NAASAEANS. 

One  of  the  strangest  gnostic  sects  are  the  snake- 
worshipers,  called  Naasseans,^  or  in  Greek  Ophites, 
whose  pre-Christian  existence  can  scarcely  be  doubted 
and  here,  even  the  old  Neander,  when  referring  to  the 
probability  that  their  founder  Euphrates'^  lived  before 
the  birth  of  Christ,  says  : 

"We  would  thus  be  led  to  assume  a  pre-Christian 
gnosis  which  afterwards  partly  received  Christian  ele- 
ments, partly  opposed  them  with  hostility." 

Like  the  Zabians,  the  Ophites  are  of  pagan  origin 

'From  the  Greek  o<^ts  or  the  Hebrew  ©^j.  The  term  na- 
khash  is  the  snake  of  the  occultists.  It  is  also  the  name  of  the 
constellation  called  the  great  serpent,  or  the  dragon,  and  the  Pie! 
of  the  verb  nakhash  means  "to  practice  sorcery,  or  to  consult  an 
oracle;  to  have  forebodings,  or  receive  omens." 

"Origen,  c.  Cel.,  vi.  28. 


THE  GNOSTIC  MOVEMENT.  39 

and  incorporated  traces  of  ancient  Babylonian,  Persian, 
Egyptian,  and  perhaps  also  of  Indian  notions.  The 
snake  is  originally  the  symbol  of  goodness  and  of 
wholesome  life,  the  good  demon,^^  as  we  find  him  repre- 
sented on  the  Abraxas  gems.  The  snake  was  sacred  to 
Hygeia,  the  goddess  of  health,  and  also  to  ^sculapius, 
the  god  of  healing.  We  can  not  doubt  that  the  brazen 
serpent  which  was  erected  by  Moses  for  the  healing  of 
the  people  had  a  similar  meaning,  and  seraphim  in  the 
original  Hebrew  means  serpent-spirits. 

In  Christianity  the  snake  of  Paradise  is  identified 
with  the  principle  of  evil,  represented  in  Parseeism  by 
the  dragon ;  and  so  the  Christians  were  greatly  offended 
at  the  idea  of  revering  the  snake  as  the  symbol  of  divine 
wisdom.  On  the  other  hand  the  Ophites  as  also  the 
Zabians  regarded  the  Jewish  God,  whom  they  called 
laldabaoth,  as  the  prince  of  this  world,  the  creator  of 
material  existence  and  of  evil,  and  they  pointed  out 
that  the  snake  promised  to  Adam  the  boon  of  the 
gnosis,  i.  e.,  of  the  knowledge  of  good  and  evil,  w^iich 
the  jealous  laldabaoth  tried  to  withold  from  man.  The 
Ophites  distinguish  between  a  psychical  Christ  and  a 
spiritual  Christ. ^^  The  former  was  present  in  Jesus  at 
his  birth,  it  is  the  lower  form  of  mind,  but  the  spiritual 
Christ  descended  upon  Jesus  in  the  shape  of  a  dove  at 
the  moment  of  baptism,  and  abandoned  him  when  the 
passion  began.     This,  they  claim,  explains  also  that 

'"dya^oSat'/AoJV. 

"i/'-u;^tKos   and    ttvcv^luxti/cos. 


40  THE  PLEROMA. 

Christ  could  no  longer  perform  miracles  and,  there- 
fore, became  a  helpless  victim  of  his  enemies. 

The  Ophites  criticize  the  God  of  the  Jews,  whom 
they  regard  as  the  demiurge,  for  his  many  vices  which 
indicate  the  low  character  of  his  divinity,  especially  his 
pride,  jealousy,  envy,  wrath  and  love  of  vengeance. 
The  highest  God,  the  God  of  love  and  mercy,  he  whose 
messenger  is  the  snake,  and  whose  representative  is  the 
spiritual  Christ,  is  absolute  benevolence,  and  he  com- 
municates himself  lovingly  to  all  things,  even  to  the 
inanimate  things  of  nature.  The  Ophites  say,  as  we 
learn  from  Epiphanius   {contra  H acres,  xxvi,  c.  9)  : 

"When  we  use  the  things  of  nature  as  food,  we  draw 
into  us  the  soul  that  is  scattered  in  them  and  lift  it  up 
again  to  its  original  source." 

In  quoting  this  passage  Neander  comments  on  the 
Ophites,  that  "thus  eating  and  drinking  became  to  them 
an  act  of  worship." 

Further  we  read  in  one  of  their  gospels  that  the 
Deity  thus  addressed  those  who  consecrate  themselves 
to  him :  "Thou  art  I  and  I  am  thou.  Where  thou  art 
I  am,  and  I  am  in  all  things.  Thou  canst  gather  me  up 
wherever  thou  mayest  desire,  but  when  thou  gatherest 
me  up,  thou  gatherest  up  thyself."^^ 

The  Ophite  doctrines  may  also  contain  traces  of 
Indian  influence.  Bodily  existence  is  regarded  as  evil 
per  se ;  and  the  gnosis  or  enlightenment,  like  the  Bud- 
dhist hodhi,  is  the  means  as  well  as  the  end  of  salva- 
"See  Neander,  Germ,  ed.,  p.  246. 


THE   GNOSTIC   MOVEMENT.  41 

tion.  We  know  their  doctrines  only  as  preserved  by 
their  Christian  critics  and  must  assume  that  the  Ophites 
themselves  were  perhaps  only  superficially  acquainted 
with  the  Hebrew  scriptures ;  and  their  identifications  of 
the  God  of  the  Jews  with  the  evil  deity  and  of  the  snake 
with  the  principle  of  wisdom  would  appear  in  a  differ- 
ent, probably  in  a  better  light  if  we  could  fall  back 
upon  statements  of  their  belief  as  formulated  by  them- 
selves 

THE  RELIGION    OF   MANI. 

How  powerful  the  non-Christian  gnosticism  must 
have  been  appears  from  the  fact  that  Manicha^ism,  a 
doctrine  that  in  spite  of  its  resemblance  to  Christianity 
originated  from  non-Christian  sources,  could  spread 
so  rapidly  over  the  Roman  empire  in  the  third  century 
A.  D.,  and  remain  a  most  powerful  rival  of  Christianity 
down  to  the  time  of  Pope  Leo  the  Great. 

Mani,  the  founder  of  this  sect,  was  born  (according 
to  Kessler^^)  in  the  year  215-216  A.  D.,  as  the  son  of 
Futak,^'^  a  Persian  nobleman  of  Ecbatana.  He  was  most 
carefully  educated  and  raised  in  the  faith  of  the  Zabi- 
ans,  but  being  of  an  intensely  religious  nature,  he  de- 
voted himself  to  religious  exercises  and  speculation 
and  became  a  reformer.  His  efforts  resulted  in  a  re- 
vival that  gradually  developed  into  a  new  religion  on 
the  basis  of  the  traditions  from  which  Mani  had 
started,  and  this  religion,  called  Manichaeism,  is  dis- 
^^Genesis  des  Manichaeischen  Religionssystems. 
"The  Greeks  call  him  IlaTCKto?. 


42  THE  PLEROMA. 

tinguished  not  only  by  devotion  and  earnestness  but 
also  by  the  most  rigorous  asceticism  which  is  but  the 
moral  application  of  a  dualistic  world-conception. 
What  interests  us  here  in  the  Manichsean  movement, 
is  the  great  similarity  it  bears  to  the  dualistic  and 
ascetic  tendencies  of  Christianity  which  continued  to 
influence  the  Church  down  to  the  time  of  the  Reforma- 
tion. Though  Manichseism  belongs  to  the  Christian 
era,  it  is  not  a  Christian  sect ;  it  has  acquired  its  simi- 
larities to  Christianity  from  other  sources;  it  is  a 
development  of  impulses  which  started  in  ancient  Baby- 
lon and  its  relation  to  Christianity  is  more  an  attitude 
of  hostility  based  mainly  upon  rivalry  and  intensified 
by  competition. 

Harnack^^  says,  "Manichseism  did  not  originate 
on  Christian  ground ....  It  is  Kessler's  merit  to  have 
shown  that  the  ancient  Babylonian  religion,  the  origi- 
nal source  of  all  the  gnosis  of  Western  Asia,  was  the 
basis  of  the  Manichcean  system." 

If  Manich?eism  had  not  come  in  contact  with 
Christianity  it  would  in  all  main  points  have  been  the 
same  religion,  and  so  we  are  justified  in  looking  upon 
the  Manichasan  movement  as  a  strand  of  religious  ten- 
dencies which  represents  a  parallel  formation  to  Chris- 
tianity and  which  will  therefore  help  us  to  understand 
the  general  drift  of  the  age. 
"See  Enc.  Brit.,  s.  v.  "Manichaeism,"  Vol.  XV,  p.  485. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

KINDRED  SECTS  IN  PALESTINE  AND  EGYPT. 
THE  SIMONIANS. 

O  AMARIA  seems  to  have  been  a  hot-bed  of  religious 
^  commotion,  for  we  know  that  several  prophets 
arose  there  at  the  time  of  Christ  who  claimed  to  be 
Messiahs  of  Israel  and  incarnations  of  God.  They  are 
Simon  Magus,  Dositheus,  Cleobolus,  and  Menander, 
the  first  having  been  the  most  successful  among  them,^*^ 
for  the  sect  which  he  founded  spread  beyond  the  boun- 
daries of  Samaria  and  was  still  flourishing  in  the  second 
century. 

Simon  Magus  was  a  gnostic  who,  as  we  learn  from 
the  Acts  of  the  Apostles,  came  in  contact  with  the  dis- 
ciples of  Jesus,  especially  Philip  and  Peter.  The  very 
existence  of  Simon  Magus  in  the  forties  of  the  first 
century,  his  claims  and  doctrines,  prove  that  gnosti- 
cism antedates  Christianity,  for  even  before  St.  Paul's 
conversion,  it  was  a  powerful  movement  while  the 
Christian  Church  was  still  in  its  infancy. 

We  read  in  Acts  viii,  9-10: 

"But  there  was  a  certain  man,  called  Simon,  which 
beforetime  in  the  same  city  used  sorcery,  and  be- 
witched the  people  of  Samaria,  giving  out  that  him- 
self was  some  great  one:  To  whom  they  all  gave 
"Eusebius.     S.  E.  N.,  22. 


4-i  THE  PLEROMA. 

heed,  from  the  least  to  the  greatest,  saying,  This  man 
is  the  great  power  of  God." 

'The  great  power  of  God,"  is  a  gnostic  expres- 
sion and  the  original  reads  literally,  "This  one  is  the 
Power  of  God,  the  so-called  Great  One,"^^  which  indi- 
cates that  we  have  to  deal  here  with  a  technical  term. 

We  know  of  the  Simonians  who  worshiped  Simon 
Magns  as  God  incarnate,  through  Justin  Martyr,^^ 
Clement,  Irenaeus,  Hyppolytus  and  Origen,  also 
through  Celsus  as  preserved  by  Origen. 

Their  doctrine  must  have  been  very  similar  to 
the  Christian  faith  and  it  is  a  strange  fact  that  they 
taught  a  trinity  long  before  the  Christian  Church 
adopted  or  even  began  to  discuss  this  conception  of 
God.  The  founder  of  the  Simonians  continued  to  live 
in  Christian  legend  as  a  kind  of  Antichrist,  and  the 
supernatural  power  with  which  the  faith  of  his  ad- 
herents had  endowed  him,  was  changed  to  a  charge  of 
sorcery  and  black  magic. 

THERAPEUTES^    ESSENES^    NAZARENES,    AND    EBIONITES. 

There  are  other  unquestionably  pre-Christian  relig- 
ious movements  which  are  inspired  by  the  spirit 
of  gnosticism.     In  his  Dc  vita  contcmplativa,  Philo 

'^ODtos  IcTTivrj   Avva[XL<i  tov  Ocov  ^  KaXovfxevr]  MeydXr]. 

"Justin  Martyr  wrote  a  book  on  Simon  Magus  entitled  Syn- 
tagma, which,  unfortunately,  is  lost,  but  he  refers  to  him  fre- 
quently in  his  other  writings,  and  the  main  contents  of  the  Syn- 
tagma have  been  preserved  by  Irenseus. 


KINDRED    SECTS    IN    PALESTINE    AND    EGYPT.  45 

tells  US  of  the  Therapeutes  in  Egypt  who  led  a  life  of 
holiness,  religious  contemplation  and  divine  worship, 
anticipating  so  much  that  is  commonly  regarded  as 
Christian,  that  the  date  and  the  authority  of  the  book 
and  even  the  genuineness  of  his  reports  have  been 
questioned  by  Eusebius  who  discusses  the  problem  at 
length  in  his  Ecclesiastical  History  (II,  ch.  17),  and 
by  others  who  accept  his  arguments.  But  it  is  dif- 
ficult to  discover  a  motive  for  such  an  intentional 
falsification  of  history,  and  after  all  the  opinion  of 
Eusebius  rests  upon  a  very  weak  foundation,  namely 
the  assumption  that  Christian  ideas,  and  with  them 
the  aspiration  for  leading  a  life  of  holiness  in  the 
fashion  of  monks,  can  not  have  antedated  the  Chris- 
tian era.  Yet  this  is  exactly  the  point  which  has 
to  be  conceded.  Even  if  the  evidence  of  the  existence 
of  a  pre-Christian  gnosis  which  originated  in  Meso- 
potamia and  spread  to  Asia  Minor  and  Egypt  and 
thence  over  the  whole  Roman  Empire  counted  for 
nothing,  we  have  still  the  Scriptural  evidence  that 
Christianity  has  developed  from  the  Zabian  movement, 
that  Jesus  was  baptized  by  the  leader  of  the  Zabians 
in  Palestine,  and  that  Christ  was  a  Nazarene.  In  fact 
the  Jerusalemitic  Christians  continued  to  be  called 
Nazarenes  even  after  the  death  of  Christ. 

When  St.  Paul  visits  Jerusalem  and  creates  a  dis- 
turbance he  is  accused  before  Felix,  the  governor,  in 
these  words:  "For  we  have  found  this  man  a  pesti- 
lent fellow,  and  a  mover  of  sedition  among  all   the 


46  THE  PLEROMA. 

Jews  throughout  the  world;,  and  a  ringleader  of  the 
sect  of  the  Nazarenes." 

It  is  absolutely  excluded  that  Nazarenes  can  mean 
men  born  in  Nazareth;  the  word  must  be  the  name 
of  a  sect  of  which  Jesus  was  a  member,  a  sect  which, 
after  the  destruction  of  Jerusalem,  had  its  headquar- 
ters at  Pella  and  which  is  mentioned  by  Epiphanius 
{Pau.  XXX,  7)  and  Jerome  (Epistle  72,  addressed  to 
Augustine). 

The  Essene  communities  constitute  another  un- 
equivocally pre-Christian  sect  with  tendencies  similar 
to  the  Nazarenes.  The  two  sects  are  so  much  alike 
that  there  is  some  reason  to  believe  that  they  are 
identical,  but  it  will  be  difficult  to  bring  proof  for  this 
contention. 

The  Essenes  are  mentioned  by  Josephus  (Bell. 
Jiid.  ii,  8  and  Antiq.  xviii.  i,  5),  by  Philo  (in  his 
Qiiod  oninis  prohiis  liber),  by  Eusebius  (Pr.  Ev.  viii, 
11)  who  quotes  from  a  lost  book  of  Philo's,  and  by 
Pliny  (in  his  Hist.  Nat.  v.  17).  They  date  back  to 
the  second  century  B.  C,  and  Josephus  himself  joined 
their  community  for  a  while. 

The  meaning  of  the  name  is  unknown  and  need 
not  concern  us  now.  Our  main  purpose  is  to  point 
out  their  kinship  to  the  gnostic  movement  which  is 
indicated  by  their  religious  seriousness,  the  similarity 
of  their  views  to  Persian  and  Babylonian  doctrines, 
and  the  ascetic  tendency  of  their  moral  teachings. 


KINDRED    SECTS    IN    PALESTINE    AND    EGYPT.  47 

The  Ebionites,  i.  e.,  the  sect  of  "the  poor,"  may 
have  been  a  name  for  the  Nazarenes,  for  it  is  proba- 
ble that  Jesus  referred  to  them  whenever  he  spoke  of 
"the  poor."  We  know  that  the  Nazarenes  were  com- 
munists who  required  those  who  joined  their  ranks  to 
dehver  all  their  property  to  the  authorized  leaders  of 
the  sect.  In  the  Acts  we  are  told  the  grewsome  story 
of  Ananias  and  Sapphira  who,  having  kept  back  part 
of  the  money  they  had  received  for  the  sale  of  their 
property,  fell  dead  before  the  feet  of  St.  Peter.  If 
the  Ebionites  are  indeed  the  Nazarenes  we  might  inter- 
pret the  proposition  of  Jesus  to  the  young  rich  man, 
"Sell  all  thou  hast  and  distribute  unto  the  poor,"  as  an 
invitation  to  join  the  congregation  of  the  Nazarenes. 

Wherever  we  turn,  we  find  that  tendencies  and 
movements  animated  by  the  spirit  of  gnosticism  ex- 
isted at  the  beginning  of  the  Christian  era,  and  that 
even  the  New  Testament  presupposes  their  existence 
in  Palestine,  for  Christianity  itself  is  stated  to  have 
developed  from  the  local  gnostic  sects. 

*     *     * 

Gnosticism  therefore  is  older  than  Christianity. 
It  is  a  religio-philosophical  movement  which  originated 
through  a  fusion  of  the  Eastern  and  Western  civiliza- 
tions during  the  first  century  before  the  Christian 
era.  Eastern  doctrines  were  studied  in  Greece  in  the 
light  of  Western  conceptions  having  as  a  background 
the  religious  traditions  of  the  Western  nations,  espe- 


48  THE  PLEROMA. 

cially  the  Greek,  together  with  the  impressions  which 
the  dramatic  performances  of  the  initiations  into  the 
mysteries  had  left  upon  the  people.  Thus  gnosticism, 
the  product  of  a  fusion  of  all  pagan  religions  of  classical 
antiquity,  is  the  real  mother  of  Christianity. 

Our  proposition  may  seem  strange  to  those  into 
whose  minds  the  idea  that  Judaism  is  the  mother  of 
Christianity  has  been  inculcated  since  the  days  of  child- 
hood, but  the  facts  of  history  speak  for  themselves. 


HOW  THE  GENTILE  SAVIOUR 
CHANGED  INTO  THE  CHRIST. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

THE   PROCESS   OF  IDEALIZATION. 

T  T  OVV  much  Christianity  has  been  prepared  in  Baby- 
-»•  *■  Ion  appears  from  our  more  matured  knowledge 
of  the  cuneiform  inscriptions.  The  subject  is  discussed 
by  Schirader  in  Die  Keilinschriftcn  und  das  Alte  Testa- 
ment,^ p.  2>77  ff-.  where  the  points  of  identification 
between  Marduk,  Yahveh  and  Christ  are  thus  enu- 
merated : 

1.  Christ's  pre-existence  as  a  divine  being  and  as 
creator  of  the  world. 

2.  Christ's  miraculous  birth.  Prototypes  of  this 
doctrine  are  not  yet  known  of  Marduk,  but  rather  of 
Babylonian  heroes  such  as  King  Sargon  I,  King  Gil- 
gamos^  and  Assurbanipal. 

3.  Christ  as  the  saviour,  as  the  inaugurator  of  a 
new  age,  of  a  time  of  prosperity.  Under  this  heading 
w'e  must  also  mention  the  fact  that  in  the  inscription 
on  an  ancient  cylinder  Cyrus  is  called  "Saviour-King" 
just  as  Isaiah  calls  him  "the  Messiah  of  Yahveh" 
(Is.  xlv.  i).  What  Isaiah  says  of  Cyrus^  is  referred 
directly  to  Jesus  by  John  the  Baptist.* 

4.  Christ    as    the    pleroma,    or    fulfilment    of   the 

'3d.  edition.  Berlin  :  Reuther  &  Reichard,  1903. 
^As  related  by  Aelian,  Anim.  Hist.,  XIT,  21. 
"Verse  2;  cf.  xl,  8,  4. 
*Matt.  iii.  3;  Mark  i.  3;  Luke  iii.  4;  John  i.  23. 


50  THE  PLEROMA. 

times,  which  is  closely  connected  with  the  Babylonian 
notion  of  cycles,  involving-  the  idea  that  in  the  proper 
season  of  a  periodic  round  of  ages  a  certain  consum- 
mation is  attained. 

5.  Christ  as  sent  by  the  Father.  In  the  same 
way,  God  Marduk  looks  upon  the  world  with  com- 
passion whenever  it  is  in  a  state  of  disorder  and  tribu- 
lation, and  sends  a  saviour  to  rescue  mankind  from 
evil. 

6.  The  passion  of  Christ.  It  is  noteworthy  that  in 
Babylon  the  king  assumes  the  part  of  the  penitent  for 
his  people  and  takes  the  guilt  and  punishment  upon 
himself.  [The  same  idea  prevails  in  China  and  is 
referred  to  in  Lao  Tse's  Tao  Teh  King,  chap.  78.] 

7.  The  death  of  Christ.  The  death  of  Marduk 
is  not  directly  known,  but  can  be  derived  from  the 
name  he  bears  as  "Lord  of  the  lamentation,"  and  the 
fact  that  in  the  cult  of  Marduk,  his  tomb  is  mentioned. 
Other  deities  who  must  be  named  in  this  connection  are 
Shamash,  Nergal,  Tammuz,  Sin  and  Ishtar. 

8.  Christ's  descent  to  hell.  Here  the  same  names 
must  be  mentioned  as  above. 

9.  Christ's  resurrection.  That  the  time  of  Christ's 
sojourn  in  hell  is  said  to  be  three  days  is  probably 
based  upon  the  old  Babylonian  conception.  Three 
days  in  spring,  the  moon  is  said  to  be  invisible,  which 
fact  may  be  compared  with  the  story  of  Jonah  who 


THE    PROCESS     OF    IDEALIZATION.  51 

Stays  in   the  belly  of  the  fish  three  days  and   three 
nights. 

10.  The  ascension  of  Christ.^ 

11.  The  exaltation  of  Christ. 

12.  The  parousia  of  Christ  and  his  second  advent. 

Jesus  prophesies  that  great  tribulations  shall  pre- 
cede his  second  advent  and  here  also  we  find  some 
close  parallels  in  Babylonian  inscriptions.  The  time 
of  tribulation  stands  in  contrast  to  the  time  of  pros- 
perity which  is  assured  through  the  appearance  of  the 
saviour.  The  renewal  of  the  world  is  preceded  by  a 
breakdown  of  the  old  order.  Men  will  become  wicked 
and  horrible  crimes  will  be  perpetrated.  We  read  in 
one  text  (K.  7861. — Cun.  Texts,  xiii,  50),  "A  brother 
will  kill  with  weapons  his  brother,  a  friend  his  friend." 
In  another  text  (K.  B.  vi,  i,  p.  275  f.)  we  read  of 
eclipses  of  sun  and  moon  and  the  quarrels  between  in- 
mates of  the  same  house  and  between  neighbors.  A 
third  passage  (K.  454 — Cun.  Texts  xiii,  49)  reads 
thus :  "Such  a  prince  [who  would  not  obey  the  com- 
mandments of  the  gods]  will  experience  misery;  his 
heart  will  not  rejoice:  during  his  rule,  battles  and 
combats  will  not  cease.  Under  such  a  government, 
brother  will  devour  brother ;  people  will  sell  their  child- 
ren for  money;  the  countries  will  fall  into  confusion; 
the  husband  will  leave  his  wife  and  the  wife  her  hus- 
band; a  mother  will  bolt  the  door  against  her  daugh- 

^This  point  and  the  following  two  are  not  satisfactorily 
treated  and  so  we  mention  them  without  entering  into  details. 


52  THE  PLEROMA. 

ter;  the  treasury  of  Babylon  will  be  carried  to  Syria 
and  Assyria;  the  king  of  Babylon  will  have  to  sur- 
render the  possessions  of  his  palace  and  his  treasury 
to  the  princes  of  Assyria." 

13.  Christ  as  a  judge. 

14.  The  marriage  of  Christ;  or  rather  the  sym- 
bolical marriage  of  the  Lamb  in  Revelations  and  the 
allusions  to  Christ  as  the  bridegroom  have  their  pro- 
totype in  the  marriage  of  Marduk  celebrated  on  the 
Babylonian  New  Year's  day.^ 

*     *     * 

The  pagan  saviour  idea  has  been  gradually  trans- 
formed into  the  conception  of  Christ.  We  can  trace 
the  process  in  different  places  and  everywhere  it 
follows  the  same  law.  In  primitive  times  the  saviour 
is  simply  a  strong  man ;  unarmed  and  naked,  he  wres- 
tles with  the  lion,  but  he  is  also  brutal  and  gross.  Such 
is  Samson  of  the  tribe  of  Dan,  and  such  is  Heracles  in 
the  ancient  myth. 

As  civilization  advances,  the  hero  acquires  the 
gentler  and  nobler  features  which  are  now  more  high- 
ly respected  than  superiority  of  brawn.  Moral  stamina 
becomes  an  indispensable  condition  for  respect  and  so 
it  is  unhesitatingly  attributed  to  the  national  ideal.  In 
this  phase,  Heracles  is  represented  as  choosing  between 
the  pleasures  of  vice  and  the  practice  of  virtue  and  he 

•See  the  author's  Bride  of  Christ  (Chicago:  Open  Court 
PubHshing  Company,  1908). 


THE    PROCESS    OF    IDEALIZATION.  53 

prefers  the  latter,  setting  a  noble  example  to  all  Greek 
youths. 

The  Heracles  of  the  classical  period  still  has  his 
faults,  yet  the  philosophers  claim  that  the  real  Heracles 
had  none,  and  that  the  stories  of  his  frolicking  and 
rude  exploits  are  inventions  of  myth  mongers  and 
should  be  regarded  as  perversions  of  the  truth.  He 
was  a  saviour  and  he  labored  for  the  best  in  mankind 
without  any  thought  for  himself.  So  the  idealizing 
process  goes  on  and  reaches  a  climax  at  the  beginning 
of  the  Christian  era,  when  Seneca  speaks  of  him  with 
the  same  reverence  as  a  Christian  would  speak  of 
Christ.     He  says : 

"Heracles  never  gained  victories  for  himself.  He 
wandered  through  the  circle  of  the  earth,  not  as  a 
conqueror,  but  as  a  protector.  What,  indeed,  should 
the  enemy  of  the  wicked,  the  defender  of  the  good, 
the  peace-bringer,  conquer  for  himself  either  on  land 
or  sea!" 

This  conception  was  not  peculiar  to  Seneca  but 
was  at  that  time  common  to  all  pagan  sages.  Epictetus 
speaks  of  his  sonship  to  Zeus  and  says :  "He  knew 
that  no  man  is  an  orphan,  but  that  there  is  a  father 
always  and  constantly  for  all  of  them.  He  had  not 
only  heard  the  words  that  Zeus  was  the  father  of  men, 
but  he  regarded  him  as  Jus  father  and  called  him  such; 
and  looking  up  to  him  he  did  what  Zeus  did.  There- 
fore he  could  live  happily  everywhere." 


64  THE  PLEROMA. 

The  final  conception  of  Heracles  as  the  ideal 
hero,  the  god-man,  the  son  of  Zeus,  is  presented  in 
Schiller's  great  hymn  "The  Ideal  and  Life"  in  the  two 
concluding  stanzas.  And  we  may  be  sure  that  the 
German  poet,  perhaps  the  best  modern  representative 
of  the  religious  spirit  of  classical  antiquity,  is  not  con- 
scious of  the  similarity  of  the  Greek  hero  to  Christ, 
Their  resemblance,  at  any  rate  in  this  poem,  is  unin- 
tentional.    Schiller  says'^ : 

"Heracles  in  deep  humiliation, 

Faithful  to  his  destination, 

Served  the  coward  in  life's  footsore  path. 

Labors  huge  wrought  he ;  Zeus'  noble  scion ; 

He  the  hydra  slew  and  hugged  the  lion, 

And  to  free  his  friends  faced  Pluto's  wrath; 

Crossed  the  Styx  in  Charon's  doleful  bark; 

Willingly  he  suffered  Hera's  hate, 

Bore  her  burdens,  grievous  care  and  cark 

And  in  all  he  showed  him  great, 

"  'Til  his  course  was  run,  'til  he  in  fire 
Stripped  the  earthly  on  the  pyre, 
'Til  a  god  he  breathed  Empyreal  airs. 
Blithe  he  now  in  new  got  power  of  flight 
Upward  soars  from  joyful  height  to  height, 
And  as  an  ill  dream,  sink  earth's  dull  cares; 
Glory  of  Olympus  him  enfoldeth; 
'Mongst  the  gods  transfigured  standeth  he, 
From  the  nectar  cup  which  Hebe  holdeth 
Drinks  he  immortality." 

'For  our  version  we  have  utilized  a  translation  by  the  Rev. 
W.  N.  Guthrie,  published  in  The  Sewance  Review,  April,  1908,  p. 
205. 


THE    PROCESS    OF    IDEALIZATION.  6S 

Schiller  touches  on  the  same  topic  of  Heracles 
as  the  divine  saviour  in  one  of  the  Xenions  where 
Zeus  addresses  his  hero  son  in  these  words^ : 

"Thou  hast  divinity,  son,  not  acquired 

By  drinking  my  nectar; 
But  thy  divinity  'tis 
Conquered  the  nectar  for  thee." 

This  idea  does  not  quite  agree  with  the  accepted 
view  according  to  which  Heracles,  being  the  son  of 
Zeus,  was  born  immortal.  In  the  same  way  Jesus  is 
born  as  Christ,  but  Schiller's  idea  of  Heracles  cor- 
responds to  the  doctrine  held  by  a  fraction  of  the  early 
Christians,  which  makes  Jesus  acquire  Christhood  by 
his  saintly  life. 

The  belief  was  quite  common,  especially  among 
docetic  Christians  that  Jesus  became  Christ  at  the 
moment  of  his  baptism  in  the  Jordan,  and  this  was  the 
original  meaning  of  the  descent  of  the  Holy  Ghost 
upon  him.  The  Cambridge  Codex  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment (6th  century)  still  preserves  the  old  reading 
which  is  a  quotation  of  Psalm  ii,  7,  and  declares  most 
positively  that  in  this  very  moment  Jesus  becomes  the 
Christ  and  is  to  be  considered  the  son  of  God.  The 
passage  (Luke  iii,  22)  reads  in  the  Cambridge  Codex: 
"And  the  Holy  Ghost  descended  into  him  in  a  bodily 
form  as  a  dove;  and  there  was  a  voice  out  of  the 
heaven:    Thou  art  my  son;  this  day  I  have  begotten 

thee." 

'Goethe  and  Schiller's  Xenions,  p.  34. 


56  THE  PLEROMA. 

When,  with  the  growth  in  a  Hteral  behef  in  dog- 
mas, this  version  was  felt  to  be  in  conflict  with  the 
dogma  of  the  virgin  birth,  the  words,  "this  day  I  have 
begotten  thee,"  were  changed  to,  "in  thee  I  am  well 
pleased,"  but  in  the  epistle  to  the  Hebrews  (i.  5)  the 
passage  is  still  quoted  in  its  original  form. 

The  ideas  of  the  acquisition  of  Christhood  by 
Jesus  and  the  birth  of  God  the  son  from  eternity,  need 
not  contradict  each  other,  as  we  learn  from  Buddhism, 
where  the  Bodhi  (i.  e.,  "enlightenment")  is  an  eternal 
condition  of  the  world-order,  and  Gautama  acquires 
it  by  his  virtues  and  his  wisdom.  The  Bodhi  is  per- 
sonified as  the  Eternal  Buddha,  corresponding  to  the 
Christ  who  says  of  himself,  "Before  Abraham  was,  I 
am."  In  a  later  version,  this  Buddha  of  Eternal  Bliss 
lives  in  the  Tusita  heaven  and  decides  to  descend  into 
the  womb  of  Maya,  for  the  purpose  of  salvation,  just 
as,  through  Mary,  Christ  is  born  as  the  child  Jesus. 
Buddha  is  not  born  as  Buddha,  but  as  Bodhisattva,  viz., 
a  being  that  is  destined  to  develop  into  a  Buddha.  He 
possesses  the  potentiality  of  acquiring  the  bodhi  and 
he  then  actually  acquires  enlightenment  under  the 
bodhi  tree. 

The  same  story  of  the  incarnation  of  the  Saviour 
God,  of  a  supernatural  fatherhood,  of  great  merits,  etc., 
is  told  of  Krishna,  of  Horus,  of  Samson,  of  Zeus,  of 
Dionysos,  and  of  every  other  hero  and  god-man. 
These  stories  are  repeated  everywhere  and  the  figure 


THE    PROCESS     OF    IDEALIZATION.  57 

of  the  saviour  is  more  and  more  idealized  and  spiritual- 
ized as  civilization  progresses. 

The  same  process  of  idealizing  and  spiritualizing 
the  figure  of  a  saviour  went  on  in  all  pagan  countries 
in  the  Orient  as  v^ell  as  in  the  Occident.  As  we  trace 
the  several  steps  in  the  Heracles  myth,  so  we  are  con- 
fronted with  the  same  result  in  the  Orient.  In  India 
the  process  was  indeed  faster,  or  may  be  it  was  begun 
earlier.  In  the  ancient  Brahman  religion  we  meet 
with  the  deified  Krishna,  the  rollicking  hero,  the  lover 
of  sport  and  dance,  the  saviour  from  oppression  and 
the  bringer  of  joy;  but  his  type  is  supplanted  in  the 
fifth  century  B.  C.  by  a  new  and  a  higher  ideal,  sug- 
gested by  the  respect  for  wisdom,  for  enlightenment, 
for  bodhi  or  gnosis.  The  people  now  looked  forward 
for  the  incarnation  of  profound  comprehension  and 
perfect  virtue.  They  expected  a  sage;  and  the  de- 
velopment of  the  thought  reaches  a  climax  in  the 
Buddha-conception  which  justly  commands  the  ad- 
miration of  Occidental  students  of  Orientalism.  The 
life  of  Gautama  Siddhartha  was  shaped  under  the  in- 
fluence of  these  conditions,  and  Professor  Fausbol, 
the  great  Danish  Pali  scholar,  used  to  say,  "The  more 
I  know  of  Buddha,  the  more  I  love  him."  We  need 
not  ask  in  this  connection  whether  Buddha  is  historical 
or  no — just  as  little  as  we  need  care  whether  the  de- 
tails of  the  life  of  Jesus  are  historical.  It  is  the  ideal 
which  exerted  its  influence  in  the  history  of  mankind 


58  THE  PLEROMA. 

as  a  formative  presence  in  the  hearts  of  the  people, 
and  we  know  that  this  living  ideal  has  been  a  most 
potent  factor  in  history;  the  transient  figure  of  the 
man  in  whom  it  was  either  supposedly  or  truly  actu- 
alized is  of  secondary  importance.  Nor  do  we  care 
here  to  trace  historical  connections ;  we  are  confronted 
with  a  law  in  the  history  of  religious  thought.  So 
for  instance  the  Buddha  ideal  (or  if  you  prefer,  the 
historical  personality  of  the  Buddha)  has  been  worked 
out  on  pagan  ground  in  perfect  independence  of  other 
ideals,  such  as  the  Christ  ideal  of  the  Christians  and  the 
spiritualized  figure  of  a  Heracles  among  the  Graeco- 
Romans. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

THE  PERSIANS  AND  THE  JEWS. 

WE  KNOW  little  of  the  later  period  of  the  Baby- 
lonians, but  we  have  a  rich  literature  of  the  re- 
ligion of  Zarathushtra  which  originated  in  ancient 
Iran  and  was  embraced  by  the  Medes  and  Persians,  the 
Aryans  who  resided  among  the  Semites  and  for  some 
time  dominated  the  Orient  with  great  ability. 

The  religion  of  these  Aryan  people  is  a  most 
remarkable  faith  which  was  destined  to  play  a 
great  part  in  the  world.  It  anticipated  the  dualism 
of  neo-Platonism  by  two  or  three  centuries,  and  en- 
tered the  Grseco-Roman  world  in  the  shape  of  Mith- 
raism. 

We  deem  dualism  to  be  a  necessary  phase  in  the 
development  of  religion  and  think  that  it  contains  a 
truth  which  finds  its  solution  but  not  its  abolition  in  a 
subsequent  monism.  There  is  a  duality  in  the  world 
which  cannot  be  denied,  although  it  can  be  resolved 
into  a  higher  unity  and  thus  be  explained  as  two 
sides  of  one  and  the  same  process.  Existence  origi- 
nates through  the  contrast  of  duality,  and  thus  only 
can  it  manifest  itself  in  multiplicity.  This  truth  re- 
mains true  even  when  we  have  succeeded  in  reducing 
it  to  a  monistic  conception. 

Christianity  was  prepared  in  those  parts  of  the 
world  where  it  was  destined  to  prevail — among  the 


60  THE  PLEROMA. 

Gentiles  and  especially  the  Aryan  nations.  All  our 
studies  in  the  history  of  the  several  pagan  religions 
and  the  results  of  comparative  religion  point  the 
same  v^ay  and  our  scholars  have  frequently  been  puz- 
zled by  the  facts.  As  a  remarkable  instance  I  will 
quote  Prof.  Lawrence  H.  Mills,  the  great  Zend  scholar 
of  Oxford,  a  theologian  of  high  standing  belonging  to 
the  Church  of  England.  He  says  in  the  introductory 
comments  to  his  most  recent  essay  entitled  "Our  Own 
Religion  in  Ancient  Persia"  : 

"What  is  here  intended  is  to  call  attention  to  the 
better-known,  though  long  since  reported  fact,  thai 
it  pleased  the  Divine  Power  to  reveal  some  of  the 
fundamental  articles  of  our  Catholic  creed  first  to  the 
Zoroastrians,  though  these  ideas  later  arose  spontane- 
ously and  independently  among  the  Jews." 

Professor  Mills  insists  on  the  independent  origin 
of  the  same  ideas  among  the  Jews  of  the  Exile  who, 
as  we  may  well  assume,  came  into  close  contact  with 
Persians  and  gained  their  confidence  to  such  an  ex- 
tent that  Cyrus,  the  Persian  king,  on  his  accession  to 
the  sovereign  power  of  the  Babylonian  empire,  re- 
established the  exiled  Jews  in  their  old  home  at  Jeru- 
salem. I  will  neither  deny  nor  insist  on  an  independent 
development  of  the  same  ideas;  there  are  enough  in- 
stances of  parallel  formations  in  history  to  render 
it  possible  in  the  case  of  the  Jews.  Professor  Mills 
continues : 

"I   wish   to   show    that   the   Persian    system   must 


THE   PERSIANS   AND    THE   JEWS.  61 

have  exercised  a  very  powerful,  though  supervening 
and  secondary  influence  upon  the  growth  of  these 
doctrines  among  the  Exilic  and  post-Exilic  Pharisaic 
Jews,  as  well  as  upon  the  Christians  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment, and  so  eventually  upon  ourselves." 

Now  the  truth  is,  that  the  saviour-idea  developed 
more  rapidly  to  a  higher  plane  among  the  Gentiles 
than  among  the  Jews.  We  noted  (page  22)  that  the 
Hebrew  language  did  not  even  possess  the  word 
saviour.  While  the  Persian  Mithras  is  very  much 
like  the  Christian  Christ,  a  superpersonal  presence  of 
preeminently  moral  significance,  the  Jewish  Messiah 
remained  for  a  long  time  on  the  lower  level  of  primi- 
tive paganism,  a  national  hero  who  was  a  ruthless 
conqueror  and  gory  avenger  of  his  people.  How  crude 
still  is  the  Messiah  of  the  Book  of  Henoch !  But  even 
here  Gentile  influence  can  be  traced.  And  it  is  notice- 
able that  the  Jews  of  the  Dispersion  developed  a  nobler 
ideal  of  the  Messiah  than  the  Jews  of  Judea. 

It  cannot  be  denied  that  when  they  translated  the 
word  Messiah  into  Christ,  the  very  substance  of  the 
idea  imperceptibly  changed  and  incorporated  many 
features  of  the  idealized  saviour-conception  of  the 
Gentiles.  Such  was  the  Christ  of  the  first  century 
B.  C.  among  the  Jews  of  Alexandria. 

>'fi     ^     ^ 

Even  orthodox  Christian  scholars  who  still  adhere 
to  a  literal  belief,  not  only  in  the  dogmas  but  also 


62  THE  PLEROMA. 

in  the  historicity  and  uniqueness  of  a  special  revela- 
tion, have  to  recognize,  as  soon  as  they  know  the  facts, 
the  similarity  of  the  pagan  saviours  to  the  Christ  of  the 
Christians.  Here  is  a  remarkable  instance  of  a  recog- 
nition of  this  state  of  things  by  a  theologian,  and  it  is 
interesting  to  note  the  explanation  offered  for  the  coin- 
cidences between  Christianity  and  paganism.  Com- 
menting on  Dr.  Hugo  Radau's  brochure,  Bel  the  Christ 
of  Ancient  Times,  Rev.  Alan  S.  Ha wkes worth,  the 
author  of  Dc  Incarnatione  vcrhi  Dei,  says  :^ 

"The  general  conclusion  is  by  no  means  a  startling 
one,  that  the  men  of  ancient  Babylon  felt  the  very  hu- 
man need  for  comfort  and  hope  amid  the  ever-present 
grim  facts  of  suffering  and  death ;  and  thus  created  for 
themselves  in  their  own  image,  as  they  must  needs  have 
done,  a  redeemer  who  should  conquer  death  and  hell 
and  bring  to  weary  souls  redemption  and  immortality. 

"This,  we  say,  is  both  as  it  should  be  and  as  it  must 
be  in  all  ages  and  among  all  races.  The  Egyptians 
had  Osiris,  their  suffering  redeemer.  Greece  and  Rome 
had  the  Orphic  and  Eleusinian  mysteries  and  Mithras. 
The  Aztecs,  the  Incas,  and  the  primitive  American 
Indians  all  had  quite  similar  faiths.  And  were  we  to 
hereafter  discover  a  hitherto  unknown  hyperborean 
race,  we  may  be  confident  that  whatever  philosophy  and 
religion  they  may  have  created,  will  be  along  these 
age-old  lines.     For  the  roots  of  this  ideal  lie,  inerad- 

*For  Mr.  Hawkesworth's  review  see  the  Monist,  XIX,  p.  309. 


THE    PERSIANS   AND   THE   JEWS.  63 

icably,  in  the  fundamental  needs  and  aspirations  of 
man. 

"And  it  is  a  familiar  commonplace  of  Catholic  theol- 
ogy, that  it  was  this  universal  desire  for  and  expecta- 
tion of  the  Man-God  Redeemer,  that  imperatively 
demanded  and  necessitated  its  fulfilment  in  the  Incar- 
nation of  Him,  who  was  'the  Light  that  lighteth  every 
man  that  cometh  into  the  world'  and  the  'Desire  of  all 
nations.'  So  that  here  as  in  lesser  cases,  prophecy, 
whether  heathen  or  'revealed,'  was  merely  insight  into 
what  by  dire  necessity  had  to  be.  And  Christianity, 
therefore,  is  not,  as  Puritanism  heretically  conceived, 
an  artificial  'scheme  of  salvation'  foisted  upon  an  un- 
willing and  utterly  alien  world,  but  is,  on  the  contrary, 
the  Catholic  faith,  which  summarizes,  completes,  and 
makes  secure  all  the  various  partial  broken  insights  and 
wavering  desires  for  good,  in  the  heathen  religions  and 
philosophies ;  which  heathen  faiths  are  indeed,  by  their 
very  nature,  nothing  more  than  the  instinctive  gropings 
of  men  after  truth  and  God,  if  'haply  they  might  find 
Him.'  They  had  faults  and  defects  unquestionably, 
many  and  obvious.  But  these,  in  nearly  every  case, 
were  simply  the  defects  of  imperfect  insight  springing 
from  the  unavoidable  limitations  imposed  by  racial 
capabilities  and  environment.  In  short,  they  were 
'right  in  their  assertions,  but  wrong  in  their  negations.' 
So  that  Christianity  comes,  as  the  Catholic  faith,  not 
to  destroy,  but  to  fulfil, — and  to  fulfil  not  merely  Juda- 


64  THE  PLEROMA. 

ism,  but  all  the  other  ethnic  beliefs;  and  only  super- 
sedes, because  it  so  fulfils. 

"Hence,  not  only  Bel,  but  all  the  gods  of  the  elder 
world  were  in  a  very  real  sense  the  'Christs'  of  their 
several  times.  And,  in  each  and  every  case,  much  of 
their  mythology  and  doctrines  can  be  paralleled  by 
something  in  Christianity,  indeed,  must  be  paralleled, 
if  that  is  to  be  the  final  truth. 

"But  to  turn  this  the  wrong  way  about,  as  some  may 
seek  to  do,  and  claim  that  Christianity  is  therefore 
nothing  better  than  a  revamped  Babylonianism,  or 
Buddhism,  or  Parseeism,  as  the  case  may  be,  is  surely 
to  woefully  misread  the  story!  It  is  quite  as  if  some 
one  claimed  that  the  events  in  American  history  were 
by  no  means  new,  but  were  word  for  word,  and  act 
for  act,  not  merely  similar  in  some  respects  to,  but 
identical  replicas  of  the  words  and  events  in  Babylonia 
8,000  years  ago!" 

Mr.  Hawkesworth  is  a  scholarly  High  Church  Epis- 
copalian; who  in  a  private  letter  characterizes  himself 
as  "Broad,  Evangelical,  High  Churchman.  Broad,  but 
not  Latitudinarian ;  Evangelical,  but  not  Platitudina- 
rian; and  High,  yet  not  Attitudinarian."  It  is  in- 
structive as  well  as  interesting  to  know  the  opinion  of 
a  man  of  this  type,  with  special  reference  to  many  curi- 
ous similarities  that  obtain  between  ancient  paganism 
and  Christianity.     He  says  in  his  letter : 

"I  may  say,  too,  that  my  statements,  in  my  review 
of  Dr.  Radau's  book,  concerning  the  heathen  gods  and 


THE   PERSIANS   AND   THE  JEWS.  65 

religions,  were  not  my  individual  opinions  merely.  If 
they  were,  they  would  have  but  little  value  on  such  a 
subject.  But  they  are  rather  the  commonplaces  of  all 
orthodox  theologians.  And  when  I  say  'orthodox,'  I, 
of  course,  do  not  mean  what  is  frequently  understood 
by  the  term  in  America ;  namely,  an  ill  assorted  'hodge- 
podge' of  Presbyterian,  Methodist,  Baptist,  and  Re- 
vivalist 'doctrine.' 

"Not  only  St.  Augustine,  but  St.  Athanasius,  and  all 
the  Church  'Fathers,'  and  later  'Doctors' — like  St. 
Thomas  Aquinas,  and  St.  John  Damascene — taught  the 
doctrine  I  mention. 

"The  Hegelian  pulse  of  *sub-lation,'  in  his  logic,  by 
which  each  category  develops  its  latent  contradictions, 
collapses;  and  is  then  restated  in  a  revised,  truer,  and 
more  ample  form;  thus  'fulfilling,'  and  by  so  fulfilling, 
thereby  abrogating  the  previous  categories,  is  precisely 
the  way  that  Christianity  fulfils  and  abrogates  all 
the  partial  ethnic  faiths. 

"Thus,  'becoming'  possesses  all  the  truth  in,  and  rec- 
onciles the  contradiction  in  'Pure  Being,'  and  its 
equally  valid  opposite,  'Pure  Nothing.'  But,  in  its  two- 
fold form  of  'coming  to  be'  and  'ceasing  to  be,'  it  un- 
folds contradictions  of  its  own,  which  are,  in  turn, 
subsumed  and  sublated  in  'Daseyn' — .  But,  you  know 
the  march  of  that  wonderful  dialectic. 

"And  furthermore ;  even  as  each  of  the  more  perfect 
categories  yet  needs  the  previous  incomplete  and  faulty 
categories  as  a  prerequisite  underpinning  (so  to  speak). 


6Q  THE  PLEROMA. 

SO  also  does  the  Christian  CathoHc  Faith  imperatively 
need,  because  it  is  Catholic,  the  preceding  Jewish  and 
Heathen  Faiths.  St.  Clemens  Alexandrinus  and  the 
other  Fathers  say  that,  not  merely  the  Jewish,  but  all 
the  Heathen  Faiths  were  'schoolmasters'  (TratSaywyoi') 
to  bring  men  to  Christ. 

"Preaching  the  Christian  faith  to  a  people  who  never 
had  had  any  religious  ideas,  would  surely  be  like  talk- 
ing 'Calculus'  to  savages  ignorant  of  elementary  arith- 
metic! Christianity  presupposes  the  inbred  belief  in 
sin,  atonement,  and  redemption.  It  is  inbred,  because 
all  religions  have  it,  more  or  less ;  and  all  have  it,  be- 
cause of  the  fundamental  facts  of  life. 

''After  all,  a  'heathen' — or  'countryman.'  paganus — 
is  simply  the  natural  man,  and  the  Christian  is,  or 
ought  to  be,  the  natural  man  of  the  'nth  power,' — the 
ideal  man.  Even  as  the  Christian  priest  is  all  that  the 
Christian  layman  is,  and  more ;  and  the  bishop  all  that 
the  priest  is ;  and  so  on. 

"I  would  like  to  put  the  argument  in  a  quasi-mathe- 
matical form,  like  this : 

"Many  Christian  doctrines  =  Many  Babylonian  doc- 
trines, say. 

"Now  this  equation,  as  it  stands,  might  have  the 
orthodox  interpretation  that  Christianity  is  perfected 
'Babylonianism.'  Or  it  might  bear  the  interpretation 
that  Christianity  is  merely  a  rehashed  Babylonianism. 
But  the  same  equation  holds  even  more  truly  for  all 


THE   PERSIANS   AND  THE  JEWS.  67 

the  other  rehgions,  none  of  which    has,    in    general, 
things  in  common  with  each  other.    For 
Christianity  =  Parseeism, 

"  =  Egyptian  secret  doctrines, 

"  =  Confucianism, 

=  Buddhism, 
"  =  Judaism, 

and  so  on, 

"So  we  might  say  that  Christianity  is  the  S  or  Sum- 
mation of  the  Infinite  Series. 

"Finally,  it  is  not  the  dead  showcase  of  beetles  and 
butterflies  (so  to  speak),  like  the  Eclectic  systems  of 
the  neo-Platonist,  and  modern  Eclectics;  but  is  a  vital 
and  living  organism.  All  the  partial  truths  in  the  vari- 
ous faiths  being  integral  and  coherent  parts  in  a  vital 
whole,  it  cannot  be  the  rehash  of  any  one,  for  it  repro- 
duces all.  And  it  cannot  be  simply  the  eclectic  rehash 
of  all,  for  it  holds  their  doctrines  in  living,  coherent 
unity." 

I  quote  the  letter  of  Mr.  Hawkesworth  in  extenso 
because  it  sums  up  the  orthodox  Christian  view  in  the 
tersest  way  I  have  ever  seen,  and  it  proves  that  con- 
sciousness of  the  continuity  between  Christianity  and 
its  pagan  predecessors  is  still  alive  among  many  well- 
informed  theologians.  The  statement  is  the  more  note- 
worthy as  it  reached  me  after  the  completion  of  my 
own  essay.  I  insert  it  simply  as  a  witness,  and  it  is  not 
astonishing  that  this  testimony  comes  from  an  Episco- 
palian, for  the  Episcopalians  have  always  distinguished 


68  THE  PLEROMA. 

themselves  by  their  love  of  preserving  historical  con- 
nection. 

It  is  true  that  the  pagan  saviours  are  prototypes  of 
Christ  and  the  pagan  religions  are  prophecies  of  Chris- 
tianity. This  is  as  natural  as  the  experience  that  the 
bloom  of  a  tree  finds  its  fulfilment  in  the  matured  fruit. 

We  do  not  mean  to  philosophize  here,  but  v^^e  insist 
on  the  necessity  of  the  historical  law  which  is  strictly 
regulated  by  the  broader  law  of  cause  and  effect,  and 
which  renders  it  necessary  that  every  new  phase  in  the 
development  of  mankind  should  be  prepared  by  its 
precedents.  The  continuity  of  the  process  is  nowhere 
broken,  and  when  a  new  era  begins  which  seems  to 
change  the  entire  appearance  of  mankind,  it  will  be 
found  to  have  been  gradually  prepared  below  the  sur- 
face of  events. 


CHAPTER  IX. 

THE  CHRIST  OF  THE  REVELATION  OF  ST.  JOHN. 

/\  MOST  important  witness  of  the  transitional  phase 
•^^-  through  which  the  Christ  ideal  passed  before  it 
became  the  Christ  of  St.  Paul,  is  found  in  the  Revela- 
tion of  St.  John  the  Divine,  chapters  xii  and  xix,  6-21. 
Gunkel  has  pointed  out^*-'  that  the  author  of  this  descrip- 
tion of  the  appearance  of  Christ,  though  he  calls  him 
Jesus,  knows  nothing  of  Jesus's  birth  in  Bethlehem, 
nor  of  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  nor  of  his  cruci- 
fixion, nor  of  his  resurrection.  The  Jesus  of  St.  John 
is  not  a  man,  but  a  god.  The  report  of  his  life  is  not 
a  human  story  but  mythology;  it  is  not  enacted  on 
earth  but  in  the  universe,  mainly  in  the  heavens;  his 
antagonist  is  the  great  dragon  who,  with  his  tail,  draws 
down  the  third  part  of  the  stars.  The  mother  of  Jesus 
is  not  Mary,  the  wife  of  Joseph  the  carpenter,  but  a 
superhuman  personality  clothed  with  the  sun  and  hav- 
ing the  moon  at  her  feet,  and  wearing  upon  her  head 
a  crown  of  twelve  stars,  emblems  of  the  twelve  constel- 
lations of  the  zodiac.  The  dragon  is  dangerous  even 
for  the  Celestials,  and  the  newly  born  Saviour  has  to 
be  hidden  from  him  and  protected  against  his  wrath. 
But  he  is  overcome  by  the  Lamb,  or  as  the  Greek  text 
^"Schopfung  und  Chaos, 


70  THE  PLEROMA. 

reads,  by  the  young  ram,^^  the  sacrifice  in  which  the 
saviour-god  offers  himself  in  the  form  of  the  animal 
sacred  to  him.  We  quote  this  remarlcable  chapter  in 
full  (Rev.  xii): 

''And  there  appeared  a  great  wonder  in  heaven;  a 
woman  clothed  with  the  sun,  and  the  moon  under  her 
feet,  and  upon  her  head  a  crown  of  twelve  stars,  and  she 
being  with  child  cried,  travailing  in  birth,  and  pained 
to  be  delivered. 

"And  there  appeared  another  wonder  in  heaven ;  and 
behold  a  great  red  dragon,  having  seven  heads  and 
ten  horns,  and  seven  crowns  upon  his  heads. 

"And  his  tail  drew  the  third  part  of  the  stars  of 
heaven,  and  did  cast  them  to  the  earth  :  and  the  dragon 
stood  before  the  woman  which  was  ready  to  be  deliv- 
ered, for  to  devour  her  child  as  soon  as  it  was  born. 

"And  she  brought  forth  a  man  child,  who  was  to 
rule  all  nations  with  a  rod  of  iron ;  and  her  child  was 
caught  up  unto  God,  and  to  his  throne. 

"And  the  woman  fled  into  the  wilderness,  where  she 
hath  a  place  prepared  of  God,  that  they  should  feed 
her  there  a  thousand  two  hundred  and  threescore  days. 

"And  there  was  war  in  heaven :  Michael  and  his 
angels  fought  against  the  dragon ;  and  the  dragon 
fought  and  his  angels,  and  prevailed  not ;  neither  was 
their  place  found  any  more  in  heaven. 

"And  the  great  dragon  was  cast  out,  that  old  ser- 
pent, called  the  Devil,  and  Satan,  which  deceiveth  the 

11  >* 


THE  CHRIST  OF  THE  REVELATION  OF  ST.  JOHN.  71 

whole  world :  he  was  cast  out  into  the  earth,  and  his 
angels  were  cast  out  with  him. 

"And  I  heard  a  loud  voice  saying  in  heaven,  Now  is 
come  salvation,  and  strength,  and  the  kingdom  of  our 
God,  and  the  power  of  Christ :  for  the  accuser  of  our 
brethren  is  cast  down,  which  accused  them  before  our 
God  day  and  night. 

"And  they  overcame  him  by  the  blood  of  the  Lamb, 
and  by  the  word  of  their  testimony;  and  they  loved  not 
their  lives  unto  the  death. 

"Therefore  rejoice,  ye  heavens,  and  ye  that  dwell  in 
them.  Woe  to  the  inhabiters  of  the  earth  and  of  the 
sea !  for  the  devil  is  come  down  unto  you,  having  great 
wrath,  because  he  knoweth  that  he  hath  but  a  short 
time. 

"And  when  the  dragon  saw  that  he  was  cast  unto 
the  earth,  he  persecuted  the  woman  which  brought 
forth  the  man  child. 

"And  to  the  woman  were  given  two  wings  of  a  great 
eagle,  that  she  might  fly  into  the  wilderness,  into  her 
place,  where  she  is  nourished  for  a  time,  and  times, 
and  half  a  time,  from  the  face  of  the  serpent. 

"And  the  serpent  cast  out  of  his  mouth  water  as  a 
flood  after  the  woman,  that  he  might  cause  her  to  be 
carried  awav  of  the  flood. 

"And  the  earth  helped  the  woman,  and  the  earth 
opened  her  mouth,  and  swallowed  up  the  flood  which 
the  dragon  cast  out  of  his  mouth. 


72  THE  PLEROMA. 

''And  the  dragon  was  wroth  with  the  woman,  and 
went  to  make  war  with  the  remnant  of  her  seed,  which 
keep  the  commandments  of  God,  and  have  the  testi- 
mony of  Jesus  Christ." 

The  woman  hves  in  the  desert  1,260  days,  which  is 
three  years  and  a  half,  counting  the  year  as  a  round 
number  of  360  days.  The  same  number  three  and  a 
half  is  later  on  expressed  in  the  mystic  formula 
1  -\-  2  -\-  y2.  In  both  cases  it  is  the  number  of  the 
cycle,  or  as  we  now  would  say,  a  primitive  approxima- 
tion of  the  number  tt.* 

The  subject  of  the  saviour-god  who  dies  in  the  shape 
of  a  ram  is  continued  in  chapter  xix,  verse  6,  where  he 
victoriously  reappears  from  the  underworld  to  cele- 
brate his  marriage  and  is  greeted  by  a  great  multitude 
of  worshipers.    We  quote  again  in  full :  (Rev.  xix,  6). 

"And  I  heard  as  it  were  the  voice  of  a  great  multi- 
tude, and  as  the  voice  of  many  waters,  and  as  the  voice 
of  mighty  thunderings,  saying,  Alleluia :  for  the  Lord 
God  omnipotent  reigneth. 

"Let  us  be  glad  and  rejoice,  and  give  honour  to  him  : 
for  the  marriage  of  the  Lamb  is  come,  and  his  wife 
hath  made  herself  ready. 

"And  to  her  it  was  granted  that  she  should  l>e  ar- 
rayed in  fine  linen,  clean  and  white :  for  the  fine  linen 
is  the  righteousness  of  saints. 

"And  he  said  unto  me,  Write,  Blessed  are  they  which 

*See  note  5,  page  16. 


THE  CHRIST  OF  THE  REVELATION  OF  ST.  JOHN.  73 

are  called  unto  the  marriage  supper  of  the  Lamb.  And 
he  saith  unto  me,  These  are  the  true  sayings  of  God. 

"And  I  fell  at  his  feet  to  worship  him.  And  he  said 
unto  me,  See  thou  do  it  not :  I  am  thy  fellowservant, 
and  of  thy  brethren  that  have  the  testimony  of  Jesus : 
worship  God :  for  the  testimony  of  Jesus  is  the  spirit  of 
prophecy. 

"And  I  saw  heaven  opened,  and  behold  a  white 
horse;  and  he  that  sat  upon  him  was  called  Faithful 
and  True,  and  in  righteousness  he  doth  judge  and  make 
war. 

"His  eyes  were  as  a  flame  of  fire,  and  on  his  head 
were  many  crowns ;  and  he  had  a  name  written,  that  no 
man  knew,  but  he  himself. 

"And  he  was  clothed  with  a  vesture  dipped  in  blood  : 
and  his  name  is  called  The  Word  of  God. 

"And  the  armies  which  were  in  heaven  followed  him 
upon  white  horses,  clothed  in  fine  linen,  white  and 
clean. 

"And  out  of  his  mouth  goeth  a  sharp  sword,  that 
with  it  he  should  smite  the  nations :  and  he  shall  rule 
them  with  a  rod  of  iron :  and  he  treadeth  the  winepress 
of  the  fierceness  and  wrath  of  Almighty  God. 

"And  he  has  on  his  vesture  and  on  his  thigh  a  name 
written.  King  of  Kings  and  Lord  of  Lords. 

"And  I  saw  an  angel  standing  in  the  sun ;  and  he 
cried  with  a  loud  voice,  saying  to  all  the  fowls  that  fly 
in  the  midst  of  heaven,  Come  and  gather  yourselves 
together  unto  the  supper  of  the  great  God ;  that  ye  may 


74  THE  PLEROMA. 

eat  the  flesh  of  kings,  and  the  flesh  of  captains,  and 
the  flesh  of  mighty  men,  and  the  flesh  of  horses,  and  of 
them  that  sit  on  them,  and  flesh  of  all  men,  both  free 
and  bond,  both  small  and  great. 

"And  I  saw  the  beast,  and  the  kings  of  the  earth, 
and  their  armies,  gathered  together  to  make  war 
against  him  that  sat  on  the  horse,  and  against  his  army. 

"And  the  beast  was  taken,  and  with  him  the  false 
prophet  that  wrought  miracles  before  him,  with  which 
he  deceived  them  that  had  received  the  mark  of  the 
beast,  and  them  that  worshipped  his  image.  These 
both  were  cast  alive  into  a  lake  of  fire  burning  with 
brimstone. 

"And  the  remnant  were  slain  with  the  sword  of  him 
that  sat  upon  the  horse,  which  sword  proceeded  out 
of  his  mouth :  and  all  the  fowls  were  filled  with  their 
flesh." 

This  is  not  the  meek  Jesus;  this  is  the  Babylonian 
hero,  a  king  of  kings,  who  crushes  his  enemies  and  re- 
joices at  the  horrors  of  the  battlefield.  The  redactor 
of  the  story  is  a  Jewish  Christian  but  the  body  of  the 
legend  has  remained  pagan  and  still  bears  all  the  symp- 
toms of  mythology. 

Obviously  this  fragment  is  the  echo  of  a  Christianity 
which  was  quite  different  from  that  of  the  Gospel  as 
we  know  it  and  it  is  scarcely  probable  that  the  author 
of  these  passages  had  ever  seen  any  of  the  three 
synoptic  Gospels,  or  even  their  prototypes. 


THE  CHRIST  OF  THE  REVELATION  OF  ST.  JOHN.  7o 

If  Revelations  had  not  by  some  good  chance  found 
its  way  into  the  canon,  the  book  would  most  likely  have 
been  lost  and  with  it  would  have  perished  this  valuable 
evidence  of  the  existence  of  several  rival  Christianities, 
for  we  may  assume  that  there  were  quite  a  number  of 
such  tentative  formations  of  old  traditions  recon- 
structed in  the  spirit  of  the  several  authors. 


CHAPTER  X. 

CHRISTIAN   SENTIMENT   IN   PRE-CHRISTIAN    RE- 
LIGIONS. 

ALL  THE  distinctions  attributed  to  Christ  and  the 
strongest  claims  made  for  his  divinity  have  been 
asserted  of  his  predecessors,  the  Christs  of  ancient 
times;  and  the  lofty  ethics  which  we  are  in  the  habit 
of  calling-  pre-eminently  Christian  are  equally  charac- 
teristic of  the  teachers  of  all  nations.  Not  only  Bud- 
dha but  also  the  Greek  philosophers  have  preached 
peace  on  earth  and  good  will  to  men,  even  including 
our  very  enemies. 

In  the  49th  chapter  of  Crito,  Plato  says,  "We  must 
neither  return  evil  nor  do  any  ill  to  any  one  among  men, 
not  even  if  we  have  to  suffer  from  them."  When 
Socrates  was  condemned  to  drink  the  hemlock,  he  said, 
"I  do  not  bear  the  least  grudge  toward  those  who  voted 
my  death."  And  Pittacus  taught  this  maxim,  "For- 
giveness is  better  than  vengeance;  the  former  shows 
culture,  the  latter  is  brutish. "^^ 

The  Buddhist  sacred  books  are  full  of  injunctions 
of  love  and  universal  good  will.     We  quote  only  one 

"A  number  of  similar  quotations  from  Greek  sages  who  incul- 
cated the  ethics  of  returning  good  for  evil  are  collected  in  an 
article  on  Greek  religion,  published  in  The  Open  Court,  Vol. 
XV,  9ff. 


CHRISTIAN  SENTIMENT,  PRE-CHRISTIAN.         77 

out  of  many  and  select  the  well-known  lines  from  the 
Sutta  Nipata  -P 

"Do  not  deceive,  do  not  despise 

Each  other,  anywhere. 

Do  not  be  angry,  nor  should  ye 

Secret  resentment  bear ; 

For  as  a  mother  risks  her  Hfe 

And  watches  o'er  her  child : 

So  boundless  be  your  love  to  all, 

So  tender,  kind  and  mild. 

"Yea,   cherish   good-will    right    and    left, 

All  round,  early  and  late, 

And  without  hindrance,  without  stint, 

From  envy  free  and  hate, 

While  standing,  walking,  sitting  down, 

What  e'er  you  have  in  mind, 

The  rule  of  life  that's  always  best 

Is  to  be  loving-kind." 

Bel  Merodach,  the  Christ  of  ancient  Babylon,  de- 
scended into  the  underworld,  broke  the  gates  thereof, 
subdued  death  and  returned  to  the  domain  of  the  living, 
having  released  the  dead  from  captivity.  In  a  hymn 
translated  by  Theophilus  G.  Pinches,  he  is  called — 

"The  Lord  of  the   Holy  Incantation,  bringing  the  dead  to  life; 
He  who  had  mercy  on  the  gods  who  were  imprisoned ; 
Took  off  the  yoke  laid  on  the  gods  who  had  been  his  enemies. 
To  redeem  them  he  created  mankind." 

In  the  same  text,  Merodach  is  invoked  in  these  words : 

"Quoted  from  The  Dharma,  pp.  14-15.  For  an  unversified 
translation  see  The  Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  Vol.  X,  part  II, 
page  25. 


78  THE  PLEROMA. 

"The  merciful  one,  with  whom  is  the  giving  of  life, 
May  his  word  be  established,  and  not  forgotten, 
In  the  mouth  of  the  black-headed  ones"  whom  his  hands  have 
made." 

In  his  Legend  of  Merodach,  Pinches  says,  "He  is 
described  as  the  creator  of  vegetation,  the  Hght  of  the 
father  his  begetter,  the  Hfe  of  the  people,  the  pure 
being,  the  pure  or  holy  crown,  the  pure  incantation, 
he  who  knoweth  the  heart,  etc.,  etc." 

The  Chinese  sage,  Lao  Tse,  one  of  the  world's  great 
moral  teachers,  who  lived  one  hundred  years  before 
Buddha,  said  in  his  wonderful  little  book,  The  Canon 
of  Reason  and  Virtue,  "Requite  hatred  with  good- 
ness" (chapter  63)  ;  and  in  another  chapter  (49)  he 
reasons  thus:  "The  good.  I  meet  with  goodness;  the 
bad  I  also  meet  with  goodness;  for  thus  I  actualize 
goodness.  The  faithful  I  meet  with  faith;  the  faith- 
less I  also  meet  with  faith,  for  thus  I  actualize  faith. "^^ 

""The  black-headed  ones"  is  a  common  term  denoting  man- 
kind.    Proceedings  of  the  Society  of  Archaeology,  Feb.,  1908. 

''See  also  O.  C.  XX,  200  "Harmony  of  the  Spheres." 


CHAPTER  XL 

WHY  CHRISTIANITY  CONQUERED. 

AT /"E  HAVE  seen  that  Christianity  was  not  the 
'  '  only  rehgion  which  claimed  to  be  a  world- 
rehgion  and  struggled  for  supremacy.  There  were 
several  others,  viz.,  neo-Platonism,  Reformed  Pagan- 
ism, Mithraism,  Mandaeanism,  Manichseism,  Simonism, 
and  a  few  others.  We  know  that  it  had  much  in  com- 
mon with  all  of  them,  including  those  features  which 
we  now  would  point  out  as  typically  Christian,  espe- 
cially the  saviour  idea  and  a  belief  in  the  immortality  of 
the  soul.  We  shall  have  to  ask  now  what  distinguishes 
Christianity  from  its  rivals  and  we  may  point  out  a 
number  of  features  that  helped  to  advance  its  cause. 

Of  the  several  reasons  which  insured  the  final  success 
of  Christianity  we  will  here  enumerate  the  most  im- 
portant ones. 

1.  First  in  order  in  our  opinion  stands  the  human 
character  of  the  Christian  saviour  which  rendered  the 
story  of  salvation  realistic  and  made  it  credible. 

2.  Another  point  in  favor  of  the  personality  of 
Jesus  was  his  passion  and  martyr  death.  Nothing 
sanctifies  so  much  as  suffering.  Compassion  and  sym- 
pathy are  powerful  emotions  and  make  zealous  con- 
verts. 


80  THE  PLEROMA. 

3.  Jesus  was  perhaps  the  only  saviour  who  was  not 
compromised  by  any  relation  to  the  old  pagan  gods. 

4.  It  appears  that  the  narrative  of  Christ's  life, 
especially  in  the  form  of  the  Fourth  Gospel,  is  more 
sober  than  the  story  of  any  other  saviour, 

5.  Christianity  was  less  dualistic  and  less  ascetic 
than  any  of  its  rival  creeds.  We  know  that  most  of 
them,  especially  neo-Platonism  and  Manichseism,  were 
very  stern  in  their  psychology  and  ethics. 

6.  Another  reason  was  the  democratic,  we  might 
almost  say  the  plebeian  spirit  of  the  primitive  Church 
and  the  simplicity  of  its  ritual,  which  made  religion 
immediately  accessible  to  the  masses  of  the  people. 
The  ancient  mysteries  communicated  the  revelation  of 
their  religious  truths  to  a  select  class  of  initiates,  and 
Mithraism  has  preserved  this  feature  which  made  its 
congregations  resemble  Masonic  lodges  with  their  sev- 
eral degrees. 

7.  We  believe  also  that  the  cross  of  Jesus  appealed  to 
the  mystic  in  whose  mind  still  lingered  the  significance 
of  crucifixion  as  an  ancient  offering  to  the  sun,  and 
who  contemplated  with  satisfaction  the  contrast  of  the 
deepest  humiliation  of  a  shameful  death  to  the  highest 
glorification  of  the  risen  Christ.  It  will  further  be 
remembered  that  crucifixion  was  the  death  penalty  of 
slaves  and  so  the  slaves  saw  in  Christ  a  representative 
of  their  own  class ;  but  slaves  and  freedmen  constituted 
an  enormous  part  of  the  population  of  Rome  and  must 
have  been  a   formidable  power   in  the  capital.     The 


WHY  CHRISTIANITY  CONQUERED.  81 

Crucified  One  was  an  abomination  to  the  Jew,  an  object 
of  contempt  for  the  few  aristocrats,  but  he  was  the 
brother  of  the  lowly,  the  downtrodden,  the  slave. 

There  may  be  many  other  reasons  for  the  supremacy 
of  Christianity,  but  we  will  mention  only  one  more, 
which  may  appear  to  be  quite  indifferent,  but  has,  in 
our  opinion,  been  extremely  effective.  This  is  the  con- 
nection of  Christianity  with  Judaism. 

The  Jews  of  the  dispersion  were  ever  present  before 
the  eyes  of  the  Gentile  world,  and  their  very  existence 
served  to  call  attention  to  Christianity  and  to  support 
its  claims. 

The  theories  and  doctrines  of  the  rival  religions  of 
Christianity  appealed  to  things  distant,  to  abstract  ideas 
and  seemed  to  hang  in  the  air,  while  Christianity  could 
produce  living  witnesses  in  the  shape  of  the  Jews.  The 
Jews  contested  the  conclusions  which  the  Christians 
drew  from  their  literature,  but  they  did  not  deny  the 
main  facts  in  question  and  supported  the  proposition 
that  the  God  of  Israel  was  the  only  true  God  who  had 
chosen  the  Jews  as  the  vehicle  of  his  revelation. 

The  history  of  Israel  was  appropriated  by  the  Chris- 
tians, and  at  the  very  start  the  Jewish  canon  furnished 
them  with  a  re'^pectable  literature  which  was  both  ven- 
erable by  its  antiquity,  and  imposing  by  the  bewildering 
wealth  of  its  contents.  It  took  a  man  of  uncommon 
scholarship  to  understand  the  Hebrew  scriptures,  let 
alone  to  refute  the  arguments  based  upon  them. 


82  THE  PLEROMA. 

It  seems  strange  that  Judaism  which  had  originated 
in  contrast  to  paganism  and  consisted  in  a  denial  of 
its  saHent  doctrines,  should  be  deemed  the  proper  au- 
thority from  which  a  paganism  redivivus,  which  under 
the  name  of  Christianity  was  destined  to  become  the 
state  religion  of  the  Roman  empire,  should  claim  to 
have  descended  after  the  extinction  of  the  old  pagan- 
ism. But  the  very  contrast  in  which  Judaism  stood  to 
the  ancient  paganism  rendered  it  fit  to  serve  as  a  me- 
dium of  purification. 

Judaism  repudiated  the  polytheistic  mythology  of 
ancient  paganism,  which  had  become  efifete  among  all 
classes  of  the  Graeco-Roman  world.  But  a  new  religion, 
a  monotheistic  paganism,  a  purified  religion  of  the  Gen- 
tiles, rose  from  the  ruins  of  the  old  paganism,  and 
when  it  sought  for  an  authority  that  could  worthily 
father  the  new  movement  and  justify  its  condemnation 
of  the  objectionable  features  of  its  own  past,  none 
seemed  better  adapted  to  this  purpose  than  Judaism 
for  the  very  reason  of  its  hostility  to  the  old  paganism. 


THE  ORIGIN  OF  JUDAISM 

AND  ITS  SIGNIFICANCE 

FOR  CHRISTIANITY. 


CHAPTER  XII. 

THE  PAGANISM  OF  ANCIENT  ISRAEL. 

"\  II  7E  HAVE  so  far  spoken  of  Judaism  as  a  known 
*  ■  quantity  and  have  used  the  terms  "Jews"  and 
"Gentiles"  in  their  traditional  meaning  to  express  a 
contrast  which  was  well  established  at  the  beginning 
of  the  Christian  era;  but  Judaism  has  a  history.  For 
the  sake  of  understanding  how  the  new  faith,  though 
it  had  to  be  Gentile  in  character,  could  profit  by  becom- 
ing affiliated  with  the  Jews,  we  must  first  acquaint 
ourselves  with  the  nature  of  this  remarkable  people. 

Judaism  is  a  unique  phenomenon  in  history.  It  is 
the  product  of  contradictory  tendencies  which  have 
been  hardened  in  the  furnace  of  national  misfortune. 
The  religion  of  the  Jews  combines  the  universalism  of 
a  monotheistic  faith  with  the  narrowness  of  a  national- 
ism which  localizes  God  and  regards  the  Jews  as  the 
elect,  the  chosen  people.  Judaism  is  therefore  charac- 
terized by  a  certain  precocious  maturity.  At  a  time 
when  monotheism  was  an  esoteric  doctrine  in  countries 
such  as  Egypt  and  Babylonia,  a  kind  of  philosophy  of 
the  educated  classes,  the  Jews  had  adopted  it  as  their 
national  religion.  Yet  the  revelations  of  this  one  and 
sole  God,  of  the  creator  and  ruler  of  the  universe,  were 
thought  to  have  taken  place  in  a  very  human  way,  and 
bloody  sacrifices  were  still  offered  in  the  old  pagan 


84  THE  PLEROMA. 

fashion  at  the  altar  of  Jerusalem,  which  alone  was 
declared  to  be  the  legitimate  spot  to  approach  God. 
Some  antiquated  and  barbarous  institutions,  such  as 
circumcision  and  other  requirements  of  the  so-called 
Mosaic  law  were  enforced,  and  the  purity  of  Jewish 
blood,  to  the  exclusion  of  the  Gentiles  as  impure,  was 
vigorously  insisted  on. 

The  history  of  Judaism  is  a  long  story  which  is  of 
great  importance  for  the  development  of  Christianity. 

We  have  reason  to  believe  that  the  religion  of  ancient 
Israel  was  quite  similar  in  belief  and  moral  principles 
to  the  religions  of  the  surrounding  Gentiles.  Yahveh, 
or,  as  the  name  is  now  erroneously  pronounced,  Je- 
hovah, was  worshiped  by  other  nations  before  the 
Israelites  began  to  pray  to  him;  it  was  Moses  who 
adopted  the  Yahveh  cult,  not  from  his  own  ancestors, 
not  from  Abraham  or  Jacob,  the  patriarchs  of  Israel, 
but  from  Jethro,  his  Gentile  father-in-law,  a  Kenite 
priest  in  the  district  of  Mount  Horeb  in  the  Sinai 
peninsula. 

Israel's  God  Yahveh  was  not  very  different  from 
other  gods.  He  demanded  human  sacrifices  as  they 
did  and  was  originally  the  protector  of  his  own  people, 
a  tribal  deity.  According  to  the  Bible,  the  Children 
of  Israel  despoiled  the  Egyptians  at  the  express  com- 
mand of  Yahveh  and  slaughtered  the  inhabitants  of 
conquered  cities  in  his  honor  just  as  did  the  Moabites 
in  honor  of  their  god  Khemosh.  According  to  the 
word  (i.  e.,  the  command)  of  Yahveh,  did  Hiel  lay  the 


THE   PAGANISM   OF   ANCIENT   ISRAEL.  85 

foundations  of  Jericho  in  Abiram,  his  firstborn,  and  set 
up  the  gates  thereof  in  Segub,  his  youngest  son  ( i 
Kings  xvi,  34),  while  Jephthah  sacrificed  his  daughter 
because  he  beheved  that  Yahveh,  the  God  of  Israel, 
demanded  it. 

We  know  also  that  the  patriarchs  had  idols,  or  tcra- 
phim^  for  we  learn  incidentally  that  Rachel  stole  the 
images  of  her  father  (Gen.  xxxi,  34).  Even  David, 
the  hero  of  Israel,  had  such  statues  in  his  own  house, 
for  we  read  that  when  Saul  sent  messengers  to  slay 
David,  his  wife  Michal  helped  him  to  escape  by  placing 
the  figure  of  their  house  god^  in  his  bed  to  mislead  the 
King's  messengers  (i  Sam.  xix,  12-17).  The  prophet 
Hosea  (iii,  4)  mentions  the  use  of  these  idols,  the 
teraphim,  together  with  the  Urim  and  Thummim,  the 
Ephod  and  the  Stone  Pillar,^  as  an  indispensable  part 
of  the  religion  of  Israel. 

Ancient  Israel  was  not  monotheistic.  Yahveh  was 
originally  one  god  among  other  gods,  but  the  patriotic 
Israelite  was  required  to  worship  him  alone.  When 
the  Israelites  were  saved  from  the  power  of  Egypt, 
Moses  glorified  Yahveh  in  a  hymn  in  which  he  ex- 
claimed :  "Who  is  like  unto  thee,  O  Lord,  among  the 
gods?" 

V   t 

"The  definite  article  is  used  D'^S'irin  which  proves  that  it  was 
a  definite  piece  of  furniture  in  their  house,  not  an  idol  that  by 
accident  happened  to  be  there. 


86  THE  PLEROMA. 

There  are  many  passages  in  the  historical  books 
which  imply  that  it  is  deemed  quite  proper  for  Gentiles 
to  worship  their  gods,  but  the  Israelite  is  expected  to 
worship  Yahveh  alone,  the  national  god  of  the  people. 

Yahveh  was  worshiped  in  Israel  under  the  form  of  a 
bull  even  in  the  days  of  the  prophet  Elijah.  The  subject 
is  incidentally  mentioned  in  Professor  Cornill's  History 
of  the  People  of  Israel,  p.  127,  where  he  says  :  "In  this 
connection  the  fact  is  highly  noteworthy,  and  yet  is  not 
generally  given  a  clear  explanation,  that  we  do  not  hear 
a  single  word  of  rebuke  on  this  subject  from  the 
prophet  Elijah.  When  he  denounces  Baal  in  Samaria 
and  Israel,  he  is  simply  advocating  the  'calves  of  Dan 
and  Bethel,'  the  only  customary  form  of  worship  in 
the  kingdom  of  Israel,  and  he  himself  did  not  attack 
it.  The  view  that  this  whole  species  of  worship  was 
pure  heathenism  and  the  worship  of  God  in  an  image 
folly  and  absurdity,  is  first  found  in  the  prophet  Hosea 
and  is  an  outgrowth  of  prophetic  literature." 

The  temple  of  Solomon  was  built  according  to  the 
plan  of  the  Phoenician  temples  by  Hiram,  a  Phoenician 
architect,  and  no  objection  was  raised  because  a  pagan 
built  the  temple  of  the  God  of  Israel.  This  fact  indi- 
cates that  in  the  times  of  Solomon,  the  Phoenicians 
were  not  regarded  as  idolaters  by  the  Israelites.  Even 
in  the  days  of  Manasseh,  in  the  seventh  century  B.  C, 
the  temple  of  Jerusalem  was  still  in  possession  of  all 
the  paraphernalia  of  solar  worship  (2  Kings  xxiii,  11). 


THE    PAGANISM    OF   ANCIENT   ISRAEL.  87 

In  pre-Exilic  times,  no  objection  was  ever  raised  to 
intermarriage  with  foreigners.  Moses  married  first  the 
daughter  of  a  Kenite  and  then  even  an  Ethiopian 
woman,  which  is  commonly  interpreted  to  mean  a 
negress.  Solomon  was  the  son  of  a  Hittite  woman, 
and  yet  he  became  king  of  Israel.  Schrader  points  out 
that  even  David,  now  considered  the  national  hero  of 
Israel,  was  not  an  Israelite  but  a  Gentile.  It  is  a  fact 
commonly  agreed  on  by  Old  Testament  scholars,  and 
Professor  Sayce  calls  attention  to  David's  appearance 
described  in  Samuel  (xvi,  12,  and  again  in  xvii,  42) 
as  red-haired  and  of  a  fair  complexion.*  Schrader 
thinks  that  he  belonged  to  the  tribes  of  the  Cherithites 
and  Pelethites,  of  whom  his  body-guard  was  composed. 
The  etymology  of  Cherethites''  has  been  brought  into 
connection  with  the  name  of  the  Cretans  and  it  seems 
probable  that  they,  together  with  their  kinsmen,  the 
Aryan  Philistines,  must  have  come  from  the  Greek 
islands  in  the  ^gean  Sea.  This  would  prove  David 
to  be  an  Aryan  instead  of  a  Semite.  The  hostility 
between  Saul  and  David  was  not  purely  personal,  and 
it  is  noteworthy  that  when  David  fled  before  Saul,  he 
sought  refuge  at  the  court  of  a  Philistine  king.  The 
historical  truth  which  Old  Testament  scholars  discover 

•The  authorized  version  translates  Sam.  xvii,  42,  "ruddy  and 
of  a  fair  countenance."  But  the  Hebrew  word  '^3'l''27?^  which 
is  also  used  of  Esau  (as  already  stated  by  Gesenius)  can  not 
designate  a  ruddy  complexion  but  means  "red-haired." 

*2  Sam.  XV,  18. 


88  THE  PLEROMA. 

in  the  contradictory  stories  of  David's  life,  points  to 
the  fact  that  he  was  the  founder  of  the  tribe  of  Judah 
which  is  mainly  a  conglomeration  of  southern  clans  of 
Edom,  among  them  Kaleb,  Peresh  and  Zerakh.  Schra- 
der  {Keilinschr.  u.  d.  A.  T.,  p.  228)  says :  "That  there 
was  no  tribe  of  Judah  belonging  to  Israel  before  David, 
can  be  safely  concluded  from  Biblical  sources  alone. 
Further  it  follows,  that  in  prehistoric  times  Judah  did 
not  stand  in  any  relation  to  the  other  tribes."  David 
was  first  chieftain  of  Kaleb,  his  capital  being  Hebron. 
After  a  conflict  with  the  kingdom  of  Saul,  David  con- 
quered part  of  the  territory  of  Benjamin  incorporating 
the  tribes  Peresh  and  Zerakh.  They  were  formerly 
regarded  as  belonging  to  Benjamin,  but  later  were 
treated  as  Judeans. 

It  was  natural  that  later  redactors  with  their  tend- 
ency to  represent  David  as  a  Judean  and  the  national 
hero  of  Israel,  tried  to  conceal  his  conflict  with  Benja- 
min.    Schrader  says  (ibid.,  p.  210)  : 

"If  the  development  of  the  monotheistic  doctrine 
which  was  proclaimed  in  Judah-Israel  in  the  name  of 
Yahveh,  must  be  assumed  to  have  had  its  roots  in  the 
center  of  civilization  of  Hither  Asia,  then  the  purpose 
of  the  patriarchal  legend — if  it  pursues  at  all  an  his- 
torical purpose  besides  the  general  one  of  instruction — 
can  have  been  only  to  lay  bare  the  threads  which  could 
be  traced  back  to  them  from  Judah.  It  is  not  the 
ethnological  genesis   of  a  small   pure-blooded   nation 


THE   PAGANISM    OF   ANCIENT   ISRAEL.  89 

which  is  to  be  described,  but  the  growth  of  its  religion 
and  its  world-conception.  To  be  the  representative  of 
this  world-conception,  Judah  ought  to  regard  as  her 
ideal  calling, — although  as  a  matter  of  fact  at  that 
time  she  neither  did  nor  could  so  regard  it." 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

THE  TEMPLE  REFORM  AND  JUDAISM. 

■jVTONOTHEISTIC  tendencies  manifested  them- 
^^^  selves  both  in  Egypt  and  in  Babylon,  but  they 
remained  limited  to  the  educated  classes  and  had  not 
affected  the  polytheistic  service  in  the  temples.  In 
Egypt  at  the  time  when  the  Tel  Amarna  Tablets  were 
written,  the  monotheistic  reform  had  tried  to  influence 
the  religion  of  the  people,  but  had  failed  utterly.  Con- 
ditions were  more  favorable  in  Persia;  there  it  was  a 
success. 

We  can  not  say  how  much  Israel  was  influenced  by 
these  movements,  but  we  know  that  a  purer  and  deeper 
conception  of  God  as  a  god  of  justice  had  been  pre- 
pared through  the  prophets  who  denounced  social 
wrongs  as  well  as  the  abuses  of  religion,  in  opposition 
to  the  established  priesthood  and  aristocracy.  The 
movement  spread  among  those  who  were  zealous  for  a 
purification  of  the  official  worship  of  the  country  and  at 
last  exerted  a  strong  hold  on  the  more  intelligent  priest- 
hood of  the  capital.  The  result  was  the  famous  temple 
reform  of  the  year  621  B.  C,  which  may  be  regarded 
as  the  date  of  the  birth  of  Judaism. 

The  temple  reform  was  a  compromise  between  the 
prophetic  party  and  the  Jerusalemitic  priesthood.  The 
prophetic  party  denounced  worship  on  the  heights,  but 


THE  TEMPLE  REFORM  AND  JUDAISM.  31 

they  looked  up  to  the  holy  place  on  Mt.  Zion  as  the 
national  sanctuary  and  the  favorite  place  of  Yahveh, 
and  the  priests  of  Jerusalem  were  naturally  pleased 
with  this  view,  for  it  procured  for  them  a  religious 
monopoly. 

The  prophetic  party  was  greatly  respected  in  Jerusa- 
lem on  account  of  a  successful  prophecy  made  by  Isaiah 
about  a  quarter  of  a  century  before  the  temple  reform. 
In  the  days  of  King  Hezekiah,  he  had  glorified  Mount 
Zion  as  the  holy  place  of  Yahveh,  and  when  the  As- 
syrians in  their  campaign  of  702-701  threatened  Jeru- 
salem, he  declared  "that  the  Lord  had  founded  Zion 
and  the  poor  of  his  people  shall  trust  in  it"  (Is.  xiv,  32  ; 
compare  also  2  Kings  xix,  31  ff.).  Isaiah's  confidence 
was  justified  by  subsequent  events,  for  it  is  reported 
that  "the  angel  of  the  Lord  smote  an  hundred  four- 
score and  five  thousand,"^  and  Sennacherib  raised  the 
siege  and  went  home. 

It  is  true  that  Jerusalem  was  spared  the  horrors  of 
pillage  and  it  is  possible  that  the  appearance  of  a  sud- 
den epidemic  caused  the  king  to  lead  the  army  home, 
but  the  event  was  not  quite  so  glorious  as  it  is  described 
in  the  Bible  and  as  it  appeared  in  later  times  to  the 
imagination  of  the  Jews,  for  King  Hezekiah  remained 
a  vassal  of  Assyria  and  Sennacherib  had  carried  into 
captivity  two  hundred  thousand  inhabitants  of  Judea. 

It  was  merely  the  salvation  of  a  remnant  at  which  the 
'2  Kings  xix,  35;  comp.  Is.  xxxvii,  36. 


92  THE  PLEROMA. 

prophet  rejoiced,  and  Hezekiah  was  thankful  that  he 
did  not  suffer  the  terrible  fate  of  Samaria. 

Sennacherib's  account  of  this  same  expedition,  writ- 
ten in  cuneiform  characters  on  a  clay  cylinder,  is  also 
preserved  and  the  passage  referring  to  Judea  reads  in 
an  English  translation  thus : 

"Six  and  forty  of  the  fenced  cities,  and  the  fort- 
resses, and  the  villages  round  about  them,  belonging  to 
Hezekiah  the  Jew,  who  had  not  submitted  to  my  rule, 
I  besieged  and  stormed  and  captured.  I  carried  away 
from  them  two  hundred  thousand  and  one  hundred 
and  fifty  souls,  great  and  small,  male  and  female,  and 
horses,  mules,  asses,  camels,  oxen  and  sheep  without 
number.  In  his  house  in  Jerusalem  I  shut  up  Hezekiah 
like  a  bird  in  a  cage.  I  threw  up  mounds  round  about 
the  city  from  which  to  attack  it,  and  I  blockaded  his 
gates.  The  cities  which  I  had  captured  from  him  I 
took  away  from  his  kingdom  and  I  gave  them  to 
Mitinti,  king  of  Ashdod." 

The  preservation  of  Jerusalem  is  commonly  spoken 
of  by  orthodox  Christians  as  a  mysterious  event  and 
a  wonderful  occurrence,  but  the  main  thing  is  that  it 
was  believed  to  be  a  miracle  by  the  Jews.  This  belief 
had  fatal  consequences.  It  made  the  Jews  overconfi- 
dent in  their  faith  so  that  they  clung  to  their  cause 
even  when  there  was  no  hope  of  success;  but  while 
they  ruined  thereby  their  national  existence,  they  sunk 
their  nationality  in  their  religion  and  developed  in  this 
way  into  an  international  people. 


THE  TEMPLE  REFORM  AND  JUDAISM.  93 

The  confidence  that  the  walls  of  Jerusalem  were  im- 
pregnable because  Yahveh  would  not  suffer  Zion  to 
fall  into  the  hands  of  the  Gentiles,  made  the  Jews  stub- 
born, so  as  to  render  the  eventual  downfall  of  Judea 
an  inevitable  necessity.  The  immediate  result  of  the 
fulfilment  of  this  prophecy  was  an  increase  of  power 
for  the  prophetic  party  in  Jerusalem  and  thereby  they 
were  enabled  to  carry  into  effect  their  momentous  plan 
of  a  temple  reform. 

The  story  of  the  temple  reform  is  told  in  2  Kings 
xvii-xviii,  and  we  will  recapitulate  the  events  leading 
to  it  in  Professor  Cornill's  words  where,  on  page  81  of 
his  Prophets  of  Israel,  he  says  : 

"The  prophetic  party,  which  had  apparently  not  been 
persecuted  for  some  time,  must  have  kept  up  secretly 
a  continuous  and  successful  agitation.  The  priests  in 
the  temple  of  Jerusalem  must  have  been  won  over  to 
it,  or  at  least  influenced  by  it,  and  especially  must  its 
aspirations  have  found  access  to  the  heart  of  the  young 
king,  who,  from  all  we  know  of  him,  was  a  thoroughly 
good  and  noble  character. 

*'The  time  now  appeared  ripe  for  a  bold  stroke. 

"When,  in  the  eighteenth  year  of  Josiah,  621  B.  C, 
Shaphan  the  scribe  paid  an  official  visit  to  the  temple 
of  Jerusalem,  the  priest  Hilkiah  handed  to  him  a  book 
of  laws  which  had  been  found  there.  Shaphan  took  the 
book  and  immediately  brought  it  to  the  King,  before 
whom  he  read  it." 

The  book  was  declared  to  be  genuine  and  on  the  basis 


94  THE  PLEROMA. 

of  it  the  religion  of  Judea  was  newly  regulated.  Pro- 
fessor Cornill  continues : 

"Our  first  question  must  be:  What  is  this  book  of 
laws  of  Josiah,  which  was  discovered  in  the  year  621  ? 
The  youthful  De  Wette,  in  his  thesis  for  a  professor- 
ship at  Jena  in  the  year  1805,  clearly  proved  that  this 
book  of  laws  was  essentially  the  fifth  book  of  Moses, 
known  as  Deuteronomy.  The  book  is  clearly  and  dis- 
tinctly marked  off  from  the  rest  of  the  Pentateuch  and 
its  legislation,  whilst  the  reforms  of  worship  intro- 
duced by  Josiah  correspond  exactly  to  what  it  called 
for.  The  proofs  adduced  by  De  Wette  have  been  gen- 
erally accepted,  and  his  view  has  become  a  common 
possession  of  Old  Testament  research." 

The  priests  in  the  country  who  opposed  the  temple 
reform  were  treated  with  great  cruelty  (See  2  Kings 
xiii,  20)  and  the  wizards  and  witches  of  the  land  were 
also  exterminated,  as  we  read  in  2  Kings  xxiii,  24 : 

"Moreover  the  workers  with  familiar  spirits,  and  the 
wizards,  and  the  images,  and  the  idols,  and  all  the 
abominations  that  were  spied  in  the  land  of  Judah  and 
in  Jerusalem,  did  Josiah  put  away,  that  he  might  per- 
form the  words  of  the  law  which  were  written  in  the 
book  that  Hilkiah  the  priest  found  in  the  house  of  the 
Lord." 


CHAPTER  XIV. 

THE  BABYLONIAN  EXILE. 

THE  TEMPLE  reform  established  the  supremacy 
of  the  priestly  party,  but  the  priests  were  poor 
statesmen.  Believing  that  Yahveh  would  not  suffer  the 
temple  to  fall  into  the  hands  of  his  enemies,  they  pur- 
sued a  short-sighted  policy,  siding  always  with  the 
wrong  party,  and  this  ended  in  a  most  deplorable  de- 
feat. Jerusalem  was  taken,  and  the  aristocracy  of  the 
people  together  with  all  their  leaders,  the  educated 
classes,  the  scribes  and  even  the  smiths  who  could  work 
In  iron  were  deported  into  Babylon.^ 

This  fate  was  sufficient  to  destroy  any  nation,  but  it 
did  not  ruin  the  Jews.  Having  gained  by  the  temple 
reform  the  conviction  that  they  were  the  chosen  people 
of  God,  the  exile  only  served  to  harden  them  in  the 
furnace  of  tribulation,  and  so  Judaism  was  prepared 
for  the  part  which  it  was  going  to  play  in  the  further 
development  of  religious  ideas. 

When  we  bear  in  mind  that  the  deported  Jews  be- 
longed to  the  upper  and  more  highly  educated  classes, 
we  can  easily  understand  that  their  ideas  of  monothe- 
ism, which  in  those  days  constituted  an  advanced  stage 
of  free  thinking,  soon  became  with  them  a  monomania. 
They  may  have  become  acquainted  with  Babylonian 

'See  2  Kings  xxiv,  14-16. 


96  THE  PLERO'MA. 

monotheists,  and  whenever  they  had  an  opportunity  to 
discuss  rehgion  may  have  claimed  that  their  God  was 
the  only  true  God  and  that  he  had  manifested  himself 
in  their  literature.  One  thing  is  sure,  they  now  inter- 
preted the  treasures  of  their  literature  in  the  spirit  of 
this  conviction,  and  their  priests  prepared  new  redac- 
tions of  their  old  books  in  the  light  of  the  new  faith. 

While  the  Jewish  conception  of  religion  was  rigor- 
ously monotheistic,  for  Yahveh  was  regarded  as  the 
only  true  God  of  the  universe,  the  creator  of  heaven 
and  earth,  it  was  at  the  same  time  narrowed  down  to 
a  most  egotistical  nationalism,  and  this  nationalism 
was  made  the  quintessence  of  their  religion. 

Every  nation  passes  through  a  phase  in  which  it 
regards  itself  as  the  favored  people  of  the  earth,  look- 
ing with  contempt  or  pity  on  all  others.  The  Greeks 
called  the  non-Greeks  barbarians,  the  Germanic  tribes 
called  the  non-Germanic  races  Welsh,  the  Egyptians 
looked  upon  all  foreigners  as  unclean,  and  the  Chinese 
are  possessed  of  similar  notions  up  to  this  day.  Among 
the  Jews,  this  idea  was  incorporated  into  the  fabric 
of  their  faith,  and  thus  we  may  say  that  while  Judaism 
marked  a  progress  in  the  history  of  religion,  it  must 
at  the  same  time  be  regarded  as  a  contraction  of  the 
religious  sentiment ;  instead  of  broadening  the  people, 
it  restricted  and  limited  their  horizon.  While  liber- 
ating themselves  from  some  of  the  grossest  supersti- 
tions of  paganism,  the  Jews  cherished  a  mistaken  and 


THE  BABYLONIAN  EXILE.  «7 

most  fatal  belief  in  their  own  pre-eminence  over  the 
Gentiles. 

Their  adherence  to  this  notion  made  the  Jews  so 
intolerable  to  others  that  they  carried  the  cause  of  their 
calamity  with  them  wherever  they  went.  Whatever 
wrongs  the  Gentiles  did,  the  Jews  gave  the  first  provo- 
cation, and  the  very  way  in  which  they  banded  them- 
selves against  the  rest  of  the  world  made  them  nat- 
urally the  "odium"  of  the  human  race,  as  Tacitus  calls 
them.  However  innocent  individuals  may  have  been 
since,  the  race  as  a  whole  imbibed  these  ideas  from 
childhood. 

It  is  easy  for  us  to  see  that  the  exclusiveness  of  the 
Jews  was  a  fault,  that  their  progressiveness  was  la- 
mentably cramped  by  the  reactionary  spirit  of  a  most 
Chauvinistic  tribal  patriotism,  but  this  very  fault  ren- 
dered them  fit  to  become  the  vessel  that  was  wanted 
to  hold  the  monotheistic  belief.  Without  their  supersti- 
tion of  the  holiness  of  their  tribal  existence,  they  would 
never  have  persisted  as  Jews;  they  would  have  disap- 
peared among  the  nations.  In  order  to  become  the 
torch-bearers  of  the  light  of  monotheism,  their  faith 
had  to  be  hardened  into  a  nationalistic  religion  and 
their  very  shortcoming  rendered  them  fit  to  serve  a 
higher  purpose  in  the  history  of  mankind. 

We  must  grant  one  thing,  that  while  the  temple 
reform  and  the  subsequent  exile  hardened  the  national 
character  of  the  Jews  to  such  an  extent  that  the  Jews 


98  THE  PLEROMA. 

remained  Jews  wherever  they  went,  this  very  persist- 
ence of  the  Jewish  race  ensured  ultimately  the  success 
of  Christianity  as  a  world-religion. 


CHAPTER  XV. 
THE  DISPERSION. 

/^NE  OF  the  most  remarkable  phenomena  in  the 
^-^  history  of  mankind,  and  in  its  way  quite  unique, 
is  the  Dispersion  of  the  Jews.  The  Jews  are  the  only 
people  of  antiquity  which  still  exists  and  preserves 
its  type,  but  the  Jewish  people  differ  from  all  other 
nations  of  the  world  in  this  one  particular  point,  that 
they  are  a  people  without  a  country.  Ancient  Judea 
is  no  longer  Jewish,  the  Jews  live  among  the  other 
nations ;  they  are  scattered  and  wherever  we  go,  we 
find  Jews.  This  Dispersion  (or,  as  it  was  called  in 
Greek,  Diaspora)  has  been  an  object  of  awe  and  won- 
der ;  and  though  it  gives  the  Jews  a  decided  advantage 
in  the  struggle  for  existence,  it  has  been  regarded  as  a 
curse  which  rests  upon  this  race  of  "rovers." 

We  are  so  accustomed  to  the  dispersion  of  the  Jews 
that  it  scarcely  rouses  our  curiosity  any  longer,  and  I 
can  not  discover  the  slightest  scientific  attempt  to  ex- 
plain the  phenomenon.  The  best  authorities,  both 
Christian  and  Jewish,  accept  the  facts  in  the  traditional 
interpretation  as  a  kind  of  mysterious  doom.  So  for 
instance  Professor  Sayce,  when  discussing  the  peculiar- 
ities of  the  Jewish  people,  speaks  of  the  Babylonian 
exile  and  the  world-exile  of  the  Jews  as  the  two  great 
national  calamities  of  the  race.    He  says : 


100  THE  PLEROMA. 

"The  Jews  flourish  everywhere  except  in  the  country 
of  which  they  held  possession  for  so  long  a  time.  The 
few  Jewish  colonies  which  exist  there  are  mere  exotics, 
influencing  the  surrounding  population  as  little  as  the 
German  colonies  that  have  been  founded  beside  them. 
That  population  is  Canaanite.  In  physical  features, 
in  mental  and  moral  characteristics,  even  in  its  folk 
lore,  it  is  the  descendant  of  the  population  which  the 
Israelitish  invaders  vainly  attempted  to  extirpate.  It 
has  survived,  while  they  have  perished  or  wandered 
elsewhere.  The  Roman  succeeded  in  driving  the  Jew 
from  the  soil  which  his  fathers  had  won;  the  Jew 
never  succeeded  in  driving  from  it,  its  original  pos- 
sessor. When  the  Jew  departed  from  it,  whether  for 
exile  in  Babylonia,  or  for  the  longer  exile  in  the  world 
of  a  later  day,  the  older  population  sprang  up  again  in 
all  its  vigor  and  freshness,  thus  asserting  its  right  to 
be  indeed  the  child  of  the  soil." 

Professor  Graetz,  the  best  Jewish  authority  on  Jew- 
ish history,  expresses  himself  thus  (Geschichte  dcr 
Jiiden,  I,  619-620)  : 

"At  the  cradle  of  the  Jewish  nation  was  sung  the 
song  of  ceaseless  wandering  and  dispersion  such  as  no 
other  nation  has  ever*  known,  and  this  dread  lullaby 
came  to  fulfilment  with  terrible  literalness.  There  was 
hardly  a  corner  in  either  of  the  two  dominant  empires, 
the  Roman  and  the  Parthian,  where  Jews  were  not  to 
be  found,  where  they  had  not  formed  a  religious  com- 
munity.   The  border  of  the  great  Mediterranean  basin 


THE  DISPERSION.  101 

and  the  estuaries  of  all  the  main  rivers  of  the  old  world, 
the  Nile,  the  Euphrates,  the  Tigris,  and  the  Danube 
were  peopled  with  Jews.  As  by  an  inexorable  fate, 
the  sons  of  Israel  were  driven  farther  and  farther  away 
from  their  center.  But  this  dispersion  was  likewise  a 
blessing  and  an  act  of  providence.  It  sowed  abroad 
the  seeds  which  were  destined  to  bear  to  all  directions 
a  nobler  God-conception  and  a  purer  civilization." 

Even  Karl  Vollers,  the  most  recent  liberal  writer  on 
the  history  of  religion,  says  in  Die  Weltrdigionen,^ 
that  "the  dispersion  (Diaspora,  Gola)  which  had 
started  centuries  before  [the  breakdown  of  the  Jewish 
theocracy]  now  becomes  general,  and  down  to  our  own 
days  forms  the  signature  of  the  history  of  the  Jews." 

Convinced  of  the  enormous  significance  which  the 
fact  of  the  dispersion  of  the  Jews  possesses  in  the  his- 
tory of  Christianity,  I  have  given  the  problem  some 
thought  and  I  have  come  to  the  following  conclusion : 
The  name  Diaspora  or  Dispersion  is  misleading  be- 
cause it  suggests  that  some  mysterious  cause  scatters 
the  Jews  among  the  Gentiles.  The  truth  is  that  the 
Jews  scatter  no  more  and  no  less  than  any  other  nation- 
ality, but  while  all  other  nationalities  become  acclima- 
tized to  their  new  homes,  Jews  remain  Jews  wherever 
they  go.  The  problem  therefore  is  not  how  did  the 
Jews  scatter,  but  how  did  they  preserve  their  own  type, 
and  the  answer  is  not  far  to  seek.     . 

Judaism  is  a  prematurely  acquired  belief  in  monothe- 
Tublished  at  Eugen  Dietrichs  Verlag,  Jena,  1907. 


102  THE  PLEROMA. 

ism,  which  means  that  the  Jews  had  adopted  mono- 
theism before  they  were  able  to  grasp  its  significance. 

The  Jews  of  the  Exile  believed  that  there  was  but 
one  God,  the  creator  of  heaven  and  earth  and  ruler  of 
the  universe,  and  that  this  only  true  God  was  their 
own  God  Yahveh;  they  identified  him  in  their  own 
history  with  the  God-conceptions  which  their  different 
tribes  had  held  at  different  times.  He  was  the  Shaddai 
of  Abraham,  the  Elohim  of  the  patriarchs,  the  Zebaoth 
of  Ephraim,  and  above  all,  he  was  Yahveh,  the  God  of 
David  and  of  Moses.  All  these  names  became  designa- 
tions of  the  same  deity. 

If  the  Jews  had  been  ripe  for  monotheism,  they 
would  have  abolished  the  barbarous  and  pagan  institu- 
tions of  which  their  religion  was  still  possessed,  as  for 
instance  the  practice  of  offering  bloody  sacrifices  to 
God,  repeatedly  denounced  by  the  prophets.  Had  the 
Jews  been  sufficiently  matured  to  understand  the  moral 
applications  of  a  belief  in  one  God,  they  would  have 
seen  that  before  God  there  is  no  difference  between 
Jew  and  Gentile  and  that  the  chosen  people  are  those 
who  actualize  the  divine  will  in  their  lives.  This  incon- 
sistency of  the  Jewish  faith,  which  combined  a  univer- 
salistic  breadth  with  an  outspoken  and  almost 
unparalleled  narrowness,  pampered  by  national  vanity, 
rendered  it  possible  for  them  to  cling  to  some  old- 
fashioned  institutions,  called  the  Law,  or  the  Law  of 
Moses,  which  was  kept  with  a  remarkably  punctilious 


THE  DISPERSION.  108 

piety  that  would  have  been  worthy  of  a  better  cause. 
But  circumcision,  abstinence  from  pork,  certain  rules 
of  butchering,  a  rigorous  observance  of  the  Sabbath, 
etc.,  would  in  themselves  have  been  harmless,  had  not 
their  religion  at  the  same  time  become  a  belief  in  the 
Jewish  nationality  which  established  a  line  of  demarca- 
tion between  the  Jews  and  the  rest  of  the  world.  Here 
lies  the  root  of  the  tenacity  of  Judaism  which  has 
produced  that  most  remarkable  historical  phenomenon 
of  the  preservation  of  the  Jews  in  the  midst  of  the 
other  nations,  a  phenomenon  known  as  the  Dispersion. 
All  the  nations  scatter.  The  great  capitals  of  the 
world  contain  representatives  of  any  race  that  is  suf- 
fered admittance,  but  within  the  second  or  third  gen- 
eration these  strangers  are  being  absorbed.  The  Jew 
alone  resists  absorption.  He  remains  a  Jew.  The 
newcomer  finds  his  co-religionist,  and  associates  with 
him.    The  circle  grows  and  a  synagogue  is  built. 

How  many  nations  have  sent  their  sons  into  Ger- 
many !  Think  of  the  innumerable  French  Huguenots, 
Italians  such  as  the  Cottas,  the  Brentanos.  From  Scot- 
land came  Kant's  father,  and  Keith,  the  famous  gen- 
eral of  Frederick  the  Great.  Who  now  thinks  of  their 
foreign  ancestry?     They  have  all  become  Germans. 

The  same  is  true  of  the  Germans  who  settle  in  other 
countries,  France,  Italy,  Spain,  etc.  The  traveler 
comes  across  them  here  and  there,  but  their  children 
scarcely  know  whence  their  father  of  grandfather 
came. 


104  .  THE  PLEROMA. 

The  truth  is  that  the  children  of  every  nation  are 
scattered  among  the  other  nations.  Everywhere  there 
are  people  who  go  abroad  to  seek  their  fortunes.  There 
is  everywhere  a  constant  tendency  to  migrations  of 
small  fractions  of  the  population  to  distant  countries 
where  they  are  attracted  by  the  hope  of  improving 
their  condition.  That  the  Jews  are  not  assimilated  as 
the  others,  is  due  to  their  religion,  the  main  import  of 
which,  as  we  have  seen,  is  the  preservation  of  the 
Jewish  nationality. 

Every  man  has  the  inborn  tendency  of  being  a  He- 
brew, i.  e.,  "a  rover."  All  human  life  radiates.  The 
Jew  is  not  an  exception.  He  simply  follows  the  gen- 
eral rule,  but  he,  at  the  same  time,  preserves  his  own 
kind.  We  find  Jews  everywhere,  and  this  gives  the 
impression  that  they  are  scattered  all  over  the  world. 
Not  having  a  country  of  their  own,  the  idea  naturally 
originated  that  the  Jews  have  become  scattered  because 
they  no  longer  possess  a  country  of  their  own,  but  the 
dispersion  of  the  Jews  antedates  the  destruction  of 
Jerusalem  and  would  be  the  same  even  if  Jerusalem 
had  never  been  destroyed. 

The  Jewish  dispersion  is  frequently  regarded  as  a 
mysterious  curse  that  has  befallen  the  race  because  they 
have  rejected  the  Saviour  and  crucified  Christ;  and 
this  romantic  conception  has  found  a  poetic  expression 
in  the  grewsome  legend  of  Ahasuerus,  the  "Wandering 
Jew,"  the  man  who  can  not  die.  This  occult  interpre- 
tation of  the  phenomenon  casts  a  glamour  of  mystery 


THE  DISPERSION.  105 

Upon  the  Jews  and  makes  them  an  object  of  interest; 
not  indeed  of  love,  but  of  awe.  We  need  not  add  that 
this  view  is  more  poetical  than  true,  for  the  Jewish 
dispersion  existed  before  the  crucifixion.  Horace  quotes 
a  proverb,  Credat  Judaciis  Apclla,  viz. :  "Try  to  make 
the  Jew  Apella  believe  it," — which  implies  that  the 
Jews  lived  among  the  Romans  and  were  known  to 
them  as  sharp  fellows  who  would  not  be  taken  in  easily. 
They  existed  not  only  in  Rome  but  all  over  the  Grseco- 
Roman  empire,  and  wherever  Paul  went  on  his  mission- 
ary journeys  he  found  Jewish  congregations, — in  fact 
he  himself  was  born  during  the  Dispersion. 

The  Jews  were  known  to  the  Gentiles  as  representa- 
tives of  a  rigorous  monotheism ;  their  claim  that  they 
were  the  worshipers  of  the  only  true  God  was  reiter- 
ated, and  their  literature,  written  with  mysterious 
characters  in  a  strange  tongue,  was  commonly  accepted 
as  a  verification.  The  ancient  pagan  gods  had  lost  the 
last  semblance  of  authority,  and  so  the  Jewish  protesta- 
tion that  they  were  idols,  nonentities,  vain  conceits  of 
an  idle  imagination,  was  willingly  believed. 

Taken  all  in  all,  the  Jew  was  surrounded  with  a 
mystery  which  made  it  very  plausible  that  some  secret 
truth  was  hidden  in  Judaism.  The  striking  character- 
istics which  distinguish  the  Jew,  called  for  an  explana- 
tion and  made  it  desirable  for  a  universal  religion, 
which  like  Judaism  was  monotheistic,  to  explain  their 
existence  and  assign  them  a  part  in  the  development 
of  truth. 


106  THE  PLEROMA. 

This  work  was  done  by  St.  Paul,  and  his  explanation 
was  the  more  willingly  accepted  by  the  Gentiles  as  it 
explained  also  the  odium  in  which  the  Jews  were  held. 
According  to  St.  Paul,  the  Jews  had  been  the  chosen 
people  of  God,  but  who  were  now  rejected  on  account 
of  their  stubborn  attitude  toward  the  Gospel  which 
he  preached. 

There  existed  for  some  time  a  few  Jewish  colonies 
which  were  not  dominated  by  the  spirit  of  the  post- 
Exilic  reform.  We  name  the  one  in  Elephantine  (or 
Jeb)  in  Upper  Egypt  and  the  other  one  in  Tahpanhes, 
in  Lower  Egypt,  both  flourishing  communities  where, 
of  late,  interesting  monuments  have  been  discovered; 
but  it  is  noteworthy  that  none  of  the  colonies  survived. 
Not  being  so  narrow-minded  as  to  condemn  any 
approach  to  the  life  and  habits  of  and  intermarriage 
with  the  Gentiles,  they  disappeared  in  the  long  run. 
They  lacked  that  preservative  talisman  without  which 
the  Jew  would  not  essentially  differ  from  other  human 
beings. 


CHAPTER  XVI. 
JEW  AND  GENTILE. 

"VJ  OW  LET  us  ask  what  were  the  objections  of  the 
■^  ^    Jews  to  paganism  ? 

We  know  that  in  all  pagan  religions  a  belief  in  the 
immortality  of  the  soul  was  dearest  to  the  pious,  and 
judging  from  an  ancient  Babylonian  poem,  "Ishtar's 
Descent  to  Hell,"  and  from  other  indications,  we  must 
assume  that  the  Babylonians  and  other  Gentiles  tried 
to  communicate  with  the  dead  in  some  way  after  the 
fashion  of  spiritualist  seances  by  professional  con- 
jurors. 

These  mediums  of  ancient  times  are  called  in  the 
Bible  "wizards  and  witches,"  and  their  controls  "fa- 
miliar spirits."  Against  this  class  of  people  the  ire  of 
the  exiled  Jews  seems  to  have  blazed  up  most  furiously, 
for  they  are  condemned  in  the  strongest  terms  in  Deu- 
teronomy and  the  Deuteronomic  insertions  of  the 
priestly  redactors.  We  are  told  again  and  again  that 
they  were  expelled  from  Israel  and  the  penalty  of  death 
by  stoning  was  imposed  upon  them.  And  yet  they 
must  have  existed  in  ancient  times,  for  we  have  a 
graphic  account  of  the  witch  of  Endor  whom  Saul 
visited.  Those  verses  which  mention  the  expulsion  of 
the  wizards  and  witches  by  Saul  (i  Sam.  xxviii.  9-10) 
are  perhaps  a  later  insertion  of  the  priestly  redactor 


108  THE  PLEROMA. 

and,  in  order  to  explain  how  Saul  could  consult  a  witch, 
if  witches  were  not  tolerated  in  Israel,  we  are  told  that 
Saul  visited  the  witch  of  Endor  in  the  stealth  of  night. 
The  account  itself  seems  to  be  complete  without  these 
lines,  and  it  would  then  appear  that  the  king  made  no 
secret  of  his  intention  to  seek  an  interview  with  the 
ghost  of  Samuel.     At  any  rate  the  custom  of  citing 
ghosts  was  a  great  abomination  to  the  Exilic  and  post- 
Exilic  Jew,  and  it  almost  seems  as  if  the  leaders  of  the 
exiled  Jews  who  gave  a  definite  shape  to  Judaism  by 
impressing  their  views  upon  the  rest  of  the  Jewish  peo- 
ple, omitted,  on  account  of  their  aversion  to  a  ghost- 
conception  of  the  dead,  all  references  to  a  future  life 
from  their  sacred  literature  and  so  gave  the  impression 
that  they  did  not  believe  in  immortality.     It  is  difficult 
to  say  what  the  Israelites  thought  of  the  soul  in  the 
times  of  Saul,  but  it  is  probable  that  they  then  shared 
the  views  of  their  neighbors,  while  in  post- Exilic  times, 
the  Jews  were  opposed  to  the  immortality-conception 
of  the  Gentiles. 

Now,  at  the  same  time  we  know  that  the  Gentile  be- 
lief in  immortality  is  closely  connected  with  their  le- 
gends of  the  God-man  who  is  born  on  earth,  becomes  a 
hero  and  a  saviour,  struggles  for  the  cause  of  mankind, 
and  is  slain,  to  rise  again  from  the  tomb.  All  this  was 
as  much  of  an  abomination  to  the  Jew  as  was  the  wor- 
ship of  the  Queen  of  Heaven.  To  the  Jew,  God  was 
God  and  not  a  man,  neither  was  he  a  woman.  The  idea 


JEW  AND  GENTILE.  109 

of  a  mother  of  God,  a  Goddess  mother,  or  even  a  God- 
dess bride  was  to  them  so  senseless  that  the  Hebrew 
language  avoided  the  formation  of  a  word  to  express 
the  female  form  of  God. 

We  do  not  mean  to  defend  the  ancient  paganism  and 
its  superstitions,  but  in  fairness  to  truth  we  must  say 
that  many  accusations  of  the  Jews  against  the  Gentile 
conception  of  gods  is  erroneous,  especially  so,  the 
proposition  that  the  Gentiles  worshiped  the  very 
statues  of  their  gods.    The  Psalmist  says : 

"The  idols  of  the  heathen  are  silver  and  gold 
The  work  of  men's  hands. 

"They  have  mouths,  but  they  speak  not; 
Eyes  have  they,  but  they  see  not ; 

"They  have  ears,  but  they  hear  not; 
Neither  is  there  any  breath  in  their  mouths, 

"They  that  make  them  are  like  unto  them : 
So  is  every  one  that  trusteth  in  them." 

When  we  read  the  religious  hymns  of  ancient  Baby- 
lon and  Egypt,  many  of  which  are  full  of  noble  inspira- 
tion, we  receive  quite  another  impression  of  the  pagan 
polytheistic  faith.  Consider,  for  instance,  the  fervor 
and  devotion  of  the  following  penitential  psalm^  which 
was  sung  in  Babylon  long  before  the  Hebrew  psalms 
were  composed  and  may  worthily  be  compared  with 
the  best  of  them  : 

"O  that  the  heart  of  the  Lord  would  turn  his  wrath  far  from 
me ! 
'Delitzch  Babel  and  Bible,  pp.  187,  206. 


no  THE  PLEROMA. 

0  Lord !  my  sins  are  many,  great  are  my  transgressions, 

0  my  God,  my  Goddess,  whether  known  or  unknown  to  me, 
Many  are  my  sins  and  great  are  my  transgressions — 

1  sought  around  about,  but  no  one  took  my  hand, 

1  wept,  but  there  was  none  came  near  to  comfort. 
I  cry  aloud,  but  no  one  gives  me  ear. 

Sorrowful,  and  overwhelmed,  I  can  not  look  up." 

The  venerable  poets  who  sang  hymns  of  this  kind 
might  very  well  be  considered  believers  in  monotheism, 
for  the  gods  play  the  part  of  angels  and  archangels 
while  one  God  reigns  supreme  in  heaven.     We  read : 

On  earth — who  is  exalted?     Thou  alone  art  exalted! 

When  Thy  word  goeth  forth  in  the  heavens,  the  heavenly  hosts 
bow   before  Thee; 

When  Thy  word  goes  forth  upon  earth,  the  spirits  of  earth 
kiss  the  ground. 

When  upward  mounteth  Thy  word  like  a  hurricane,   food  and 
drink  are  in  plenty  abounding. 

Resoundeth  Thy  word  in  terrestrial  places,  green  groweth  the 
grass  in  the  meadows. 

Thy  word  maketh   fat  the  flocks  and  herds,  and  increascth  all 
breath-endowed  creatures. 

We  may  be  sure  that  the  gods  in  the  temples  were 
not  deemed  to  be  gods  themselves,  but  only  their 
representative  images,  and  we  can  see  no  differ- 
ence between  pagan  idolatry  so  called  and  the 
use  of  icons  in  Christian  churches.  But  this  is  a  side 
issue ;  the  main  point  is  that  the  Jews  were  opposed  to 
the  worship  of  idols  including  the  making  of  statues 
and  images  in  any  form ;  they  were  further  opposed  to 
the  idea  of  a  God-man,  and  to  the  belief  in  immortalitv 


JEW  AND  GENTILE.  Ill 

such  as  was  held  by  all  the  Gentiles.  These  ideas,  how- 
ever, reasserted  themselves  in  the  Apocrypha  and  thus 
prepared  the  way  for  the  foundation  of  gnostic  views 
resembling  Christianity,  among  such  Jews  as  Philo, 
Apollos  and  finally  St.  Paul,  the  Apostle. 

The  contrast  between  Jew  and  Gentile  is  fundament- 
ally based  upon  a  temperamental  difference.  The  Jew 
wants  religion  pure  and  simple;  he  takes  monotheism 
seriously  and  brooks  no  mediation  of  intercessors,  no 
mysticism,  no  allegorizing,  no  profound  and  abstruse 
symbols.  The  Gentile  sees  the  divine  everywhere.  His 
monotheism  is  no  rigid  Unitarianism.  He  is  a  dualist 
whose  conception  of  the  duality  of  things  is  explained 
by  a  higher  union  and  thus  he  formulates  his  belief  in 
God  as  trinitarianism.  He  loves  art  and  myth,  and 
this  makes  him  appear  in  the  eye  of  the  Jew  as  an 
idolater,  a  worshiper  of  images.  He  seeks  God  not 
only  above  the  clouds  but  also  in  the  living  examples  of 
heroes,  of  ideal  men,  of  the  great  representatives  of 
God  on  earth. 

This  same  contrast  of  the  two  attitudes  gave  rise  to 
the  rigorously  monotheistic  Islam,  but  as  there  are 
Unitarians  among  the  Christians,  so  there  are  among 
the  Moslems,  especially  among  the  Sheites,  those  who 
believe  in  a  second  advent  of  Mohammed,  of  a  Mahdi, 
or  a  saviour  of  some  kind;  and  Behaism,  the  new  re- 
ligion that  originated  in  Persia,  proves  that  the  idea  of 
a  divine  Mediator  is  still  alive  in  Mohammedan 
countries. 


CHAPTER  XVII. 
THE  JUDAISM  OF  JESUS. 

SAINT  PAUL  Speaks  of  Christ  as  the  Son  of  David 
according  to  the  flesh  and  follows  in  this  the  rab- 
binical tradition  which  was  commonly  established  at 
the  time  of  Jesus.  David  was  the  great  hero  in  the 
history  of  Israel  whose  rule  marks  the  period  of  the 
nation's  greatest  glory.  In  the  times  of  their  oppres- 
sion they  longed  for  a  hero  who  would  reestablish  the 
kingdom  of  David  and  so  it  was  but  natural  that  the 
expected  Messiah  was  called  the  son  of  David.  But 
though  the  Messiah  was  so  called,  there  is  no  reason 
why  he  should  actually  belong  to  the  house  of  David. 
The  house  of  David  had  died  out  with  Zerubbabel,  and 
if  there  were  any  of  his  family  left  they  would  have 
been  able  to  trace  their  genealogy  only  indirectly  to 
the  royal  house. 

The  genealogies  of  Joseph  preserved  in  the  New 
Testament  are  positively  impossible  and  obviously  of  a 
late  date.  Even  if  they  were  tenable  they  would  prove 
nothing  of  the  descent  of  Jesus  on  the  orthodox  as- 
sumption, because  Joseph  was  not  deemed  his  father. 
We  ought  to  have  had  a  genealogy  of  Mary. 

We  must  assume  that  in  the  days  of  Jesus,  the  claim 
of  his  disciples  that  he  was  the  expected  Messiah  was 
met  with  the  objection  that  nothing  good  could  come 


THE  JUDAISM  OF  JESUS.  113 

from  Nazareth,  and  that  the  Messiah  must  be  of  the 
house  of  David.  If  Jesus  could  by  any  genealogy  have 
established  the  claim  of  his  descent  from  David,  it 
would  certainly  have  been  recorded,  but  we  have  in  the 
New  Testament  a  passage  repeated  in  the  three  synoptic 
Gospels  which  proves  the  very  opposite,  viz.,  that  Jesus, 
in  the  presence  of  a  large  number  of  people  assembled 
in  the  court  of  the  temple,  disproves  the  idea  current 
among  the  scribes  and  Pharisees  that  the  Messiah  must 
be  a  son  of  David.  This  incident  is  repeated  in  Mark 
xii,  35-37;  Matt.  XXV,  41-46;  and  Luke  xx,  41-44. 

We  quote  the  shortest  report  according  to  the  Gospel 
of  St.  Mark  as  follows : 

"And  Jesus  answered  and  said,  while  he  taught  in 
the  temple,  How  say  the  scribes  that  Christ  is  the  son 
of  David? 

"For  David  himself  said  by  the  Holy  Ghost,  The 
Lord  said  to  my  lord,  Sit  thou  on  my  right  hand,  till 
I  make  thine  enemies  thy  footstool. 

"David  therefore  himself  calleth  him  Lord;  and 
whence  is  he  then  his  son?  And  the  common  people 
heard  him  gladly." 

In  reading  these  verses  we  must  bear  in  mind  that 
Psalm  ex,  to  which  Jesus  refers,  was  in  his  days  com- 
monly ascribed  to  David,  and  the  expression  "My 
Lord"  was  interpreted  to  be  addressed  to  the  Anointed 
One,  the  Messiah.  In  claiming  the  dignity  of  Messiah, 
Jesus  refutes  the  popular  notion  of  a  Messiahship  which 


114  THE  PLEROMA. 

was  constituted  merely  by  descent,  the  aristocracy  of 
blood. 

The  question  here  is  not  whether  the  Psalm  was 
really  written  by  David  nor  whether  the  point  which 
Christ  makes  is  unanswerable.  We  have  simply  to 
note  that  by  this  argument  he  silenced  the  claim  of  the 
scribes  and  Pharisees  which  they  must  have  made ;  for 
if  this  is  an  answer  to  a  point  raised  by  his  enemies, 
it  can  only  have  been  the  proposition  that  no  one  else 
but  a  descendant  of  David  ought  to  be  the  Messiah. 
The  answer  presupposes  that  Jesus  was  not  of  the 
family  of  David,  but,  that  while  he  did  not  claim  to  be 
a  descendant  of  the  royal  house,  he  yet  held  to  the 
claim  of  Messiahship.  If  he  was  called  the  son  of 
David  by  his  adherents  and  by  the  sick  who  sought  his 
help,  it  was  only  because  in  popular  parlance  the  terms 
Messiah  and  Son  of  David  had  been  identified. 

For  these  reasons  we  must  assume  that  Jesus  was 
born  a  Galilean,  a  child  of  the  people,  and  the  story  of 
his  royal  descent  was  an  afterthought.  It  was  attrib- 
uted to  him  in  the  same  way  as  five  hundred  years 
before  him,  it  was  claimed  that  Buddha  was  the  son  of 
a  king. 

While  Jesus  was  probably  a  Galilean,  and  as  such, 
of  Gentile  blood,  though  not  purely  Aryan,^^  yet  he 

'"The  Galileans  were  fanatical  Jews  according  to  their  religion, 
but  thej'-  were  a  mixed  race  and  we  will  grant  to  Professor 
Haupt  (See  Open  Court,  Vol.  XXIII,  p.  103  fif.)  that  Galilee  has 
been  peopled  by  immigrants  of  Aryan  descent.  Granting  the 
argument,  we  are,  however,  not  prepared  to  say  that  Jesus  was 
an  Aryan.     First  we  know  that  the  Aryan  immigrants  were  not 


THE  JUDAISM  OF  JESUS.  115 

was  certainly  a  Jew  by  religion.  He  sent  out  his  dis- 
ciples to  the  ''lost  sheep  of  the  house  of  Israel,"  and 
adds  the  special  injunction  not  to  go  to  the  Samaritans 
nor  to  the  Gentiles  (Matt,  x,  5-6).  How  Httle  tenable 
it  is  to  interpret  this  as  a  temporary  measure  to  be 
superseded  afterwards  by  a  world  mission,  appears 
from  verse  23,  where  Christ  declares,  "Verily  I  say 
unto  you,  ye  shall  not  have  gone  over  the  cities  of 
Israel  till  the  son  of  man  be  come,"  which  can  only 
mean  the  second  advent  of  Christ  in  all  his  glory,  for  in 
any  other  possible  sense  the  first  advent  had  taken 
place,  since  the  son  of  man  had  come  and  was  speaking 
to  them. 

According  to  Matt,  xv,  22  ff.,  and  Mark  vii,  25  ff., 
Jesus  refuses  his  help  to  a  Gentile  woman.  She  is 
called  a  Canaanite  in  the  former  account  and  a  Greek 
of  Syro-Phcenician  nationality  in  the  other.  Jesus 
says  to  her,  "it  is  not  meet  to  take  the  children's  bread 
and  cast  it  to  the  dogs."  She  takes  his  harsh  answer  in 
full  recognition  of  the  superiority  of  the  Jews,  and 
taking  up  the  same  mode  of  expression  which  Jesus 
uses  she  answers,  "Yet  the  dogs  eat  the  crumbs  which 
fall  from  their  master's  table."     Only  on  account  of 

pure  Aryans,  but,  like  the  Persians  and  even  more  than  they, 
were  considerably  mixed  with  Semitic  blood,  for  their  ances- 
tors had  been  living  among  Semites  for  centuries;  and  in  addi- 
tion we  know  that  many  Syrians  and  Phoenicians  and  remnants 
of  the  aboriginal  population  were  living  in  Galilee.  All  we  can 
say  is  that  Jesus  was  a  Galilean  and  the  Galileans  were  a  people 
of  mixed  blood. 


116  THE  PLEROMA. 

her  great  faith  Jesus  yields  and  heals  her  daughter. 
Luke,  who  is  a  Gentile  himself,  omits  the  story. 

We  must  remember  that  the  Jews  called  the  Gentiles 
"dogs"  and  "swine"  and  we  may  very  well  interpret 
Christ's  saying  (Matt,  vii,  6),  that  that  which  is  "holy" 
should  not  be  given  to  the  dogs,  and  that  pearls  should 
not  be  cast  before  the  swine,  in  this  same  sense,  that 
the  blessings  of  his  Gospel  do  not  belong  to  the  Gen- 
tiles. 

The  most  important  passage  in  which  Jesus  stands 
up  for  Judaism  is  contained  in  the  Sermon  on  the 
Mount,  where  we  read : 

"For  verily  I  say  unto  you,  Till  heaven  and  earth 
pass,  one  jot  or  one  tittle  shall  in  no  wise  pass  from 
the  law,  till  all  be  fulfilled." 

The  Greek  words  "jot"  and  "tittle"  denote  the  dia- 
critical points  used  in  the  Hebrew  text,  and  so  this  say- 
ing of  Jesus  does  not  only  insist  on  the  law  in  the 
letter  but  includes  the  most  unessential  parts  of  the 
letter  also.  One  could  not  express  himself  more  se- 
verely as  insisting  on  the  significance  of  a  literal 
presentation  of  the  law  than  is  done  here  in  a  word 
ascribed  to  Jesus,  and  this  word  stands  in  strong  con- 
tradiction to  the  spirit  which  permeates  the  religion  of 
Jesus  as  it  is  commonly  understood,  and  especially  to 
the  principles  in  which  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  is 
written.  In  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  Jesus  insists 
that  the  spirit  is  the  main  thing,  and  according  to  other 
passages  he  would  abolish  the  letter  in  order  to  pre- 


THE  JUDAISM  OF  JESUS.  117 

serve  and  insist  on  the  spirit  which  constitutes  the 
purpose  of  the  law.  But  if  this  passage  means  what 
it  says,  the  fulfilment  of  the  law  must  go  down  into 
the  most  minute  details,  insisted  on  so  vigorously  that 
the  law  in  its  very  letter  is  more  stable  than  heaven 
and  earth.  Heaven  and  earth  shall  pass  away  before 
we  can  expect  a  relaxation  of  the  Mosaic  law.  The 
parallel  passage  of  this  sentence  is  found  in  Luke  xvi, 
17,  which  reads  as  follows: 

"And  it  is  easier  for  heaven  and  earth  to  pass,  than 
one  tittle  of  the  law  to  fail." 

It  is  obvious  that  this  doctrine  is  contrary  to  the 
interpretation  which  had  been  established  in  the  Gentile 
churches,  and  we  know  that  it  was  vigorously  opposed 
by  St.  Paul.  He  claimed  that  the  law  had  been  ful- 
filled, and  that  the  pagans  need  not  be  held  to  observe 
the  details  of  the  Mosaic  law,  such  as  circumcision, 
abstinence  from  pork,  etc.,  and  yet  the  passage  is  un- 
equivocal. This  seems  to  be  the  best  proof  of  its 
genuineness. 

Texts  have  often  been  altered  to  conform  to  new 
doctrines,  and  so  we  are  justified  in  assuming  that 
verses  which  incorporate  an  older  but  rejected  view 
represent  the  original  text  and  are  traces  of  a  belief 
that  is  no  longer  countenanced.  Only  by  some  inad- 
vertence were  they  suffered  to  remain,  and  after  the 
text  became  too  sacred  for  alterations,  proved  a  stum- 
bling-block to  exegetics.  Our  passage  is  to  all  appear- 
ance such  a  relic,  the  character  of  which  still  bears 


118  THE  PLEROMA. 

witness  to  an  older  tradition.  The  severity  with  which 
the  preservation  of  the  Mosaic  law  is  insisted  upon  is 
modified,  however,  by  the  words  "Till  all  be  fulfilled." 

It  is  not  impossible  that  this  second  clause  in  the 
sentence,  "till  all  be  fulfilled,"  is  an  addition  made  by 
a  Gentile  Christian  scribe,  with  the  intention  of  soft- 
ening the  meaning  of  this  sentence.  Paul  claimed  that 
the  law  was  fulfilled  in  Christ,  and  for  this  reason  it 
need  no  longer  be  observed  by  the  Gentiles.  Paul's 
arguments  appealed  to  the  Gentiles  and  they  no  longer 
felt  bound  to  obey  the  Mosaic  law,  so  the  scribe  by 
adding  the  clause  "till  all  be  fulfilled"  reminds  his 
readers  of  the  Pauline  doctrine  that  in  spite  of  the 
acknowledged  divinity  of  the  Mosaic  law  it  was  no 
longer  in  force  since  it  had  been  fulfilled  in  Christ; 
but  in  inserting  this  clause,  "till  all  be  fulfilled,"  he 
forgot  to  cancel  the  other  statement  which  it  was 
intended  to  replace,  "till  heaven  and  earth  shall  pass 
away";  and  so  we  have  here  a  double  condition,  one 
which  reflects  the  original  meaning,  the  other,  the  new 
interpretation  put  on  it. 

Since  it  is  not  probable  that  these  passages  which 
indicate  the  Jewish  spirit  of  Jesus  were  later  inven- 
tions, because  the  Gentile  Church  would  not  have  in- 
vented these  sayings  and  would  not  have  superadded 
them  to  the  sacred  text,  the  opposite  must  be  assumed 
to  be  nearer  the  truth,  viz.,  that  the  original  Jesus  was 
and  actually  remained  a  Jew  in  his  religion  but  that 
later  traditions  tended  more  and  more  to  obliterate  his 


THE  JUDAISM  OF  JESUS.  119 

Jewish  conviction  and  superadded  to  the  traditional 
text,  sayings  of  a  more  cosmopohtan  character.  It  is 
noticeable,  for  instance,  that  the  only  important  passage 
in  which  Jesus  shows  the  intention  of  founding  a  uni- 
versal religion  is  an  utterance  attributed  to  him  after 
his  death  and  before  his  ascension,  when  he  says  (Mark 
xvi,  15),  "Go  ye  into  all  the  world  and  preach  the 
Gospel  to  every  creature." 

The  personality  of  Jesus  must  have  been  unusually 
attractive  and  sympathetic,  especially  to  the  poor,  the 
lowly,  the  oppressed ;  but  he  was  a  Jew  in  his  convic- 
tions, and  had  he  not  been  a  Jew  he  would  have  been 
out  of  harmony  with  his  surroundings,  for  cosmopoli- 
tan ideas  would  scarcely  have  appealed  to  the  poor 
Galilean  fisher-folk. 

We  do  not  accept  the  theory  that  the  life  of  Jesus 
was  a  myth.  We  believe  that  he  was  a  real  person  and 
that  ultimately  the  Gospel  accounts  are  based  upon  fact. 
Nevertheless  the  Gospel  story  is  not  history;  it  is 
strongly  colored  by  the  Christology  of  the  Church,  and 
the  modifications  which  the  original  story  underwent 
are  the  communal  work  of  successive  generations,  until 
the  Gospel  assumed  a  shape  that  was  generally  accept- 
able to  the  majority  of  Christians.  New  Testament 
scholars  are  fairly  well  agreed  that  Mark  represents 
the  oldest  account  of  the  historical  Jesus.  It  presup- 
poses an  earlier  Gospel,  the  so-called  Proto-Mark, 
which  served  as  a  source  for  the  three  synoptic  Gospels 
and  is,  in  its  turn,  based  upon  still  older  documents. 


120  THE  PLEROMA. 

the  Logia  and  other  personal  reminiscences  of  Jesus. 
Matthew  is  a  Judaizing  redaction  and  incorporates 
additional  material,  while  Luke,  being  compiled  from 
other  sources,  was  adapted  for  the  use  of  Gentiles." 
The  fourth  Gospel,  however,  though  it  seems  to  have 
incorporated  some  new  reliable  information,  probably 
genuine  Johannine  traditions,  is,  upon  the  whole,  the 
least  historical,  but  it  ranges  highest  in  its  philosoph- 
ical conception.  It  represents  the  final  stage  in  which 
Jesus,  the  Messiah,  the  son  of  David,  the  son  of  Man, 
has  at  last  become  the  Christ,  the  Logos,  the  Saviour 
of  all  mankind. 

There  is  a  faction  of  Christianity  to-day,  as  there 
always  has  been,  who  would  discard  the  Christological 
additions  and  go  back  to  the  historical  Jesus,  but  their 
procedure  seems  to  me  to  be  based  upon  an  error.  Re- 
ligion can  never  be  founded  upon  historical  facts  or 
single  ocairrences,  nor  upon  individual  characters,  but 
must  always  rest  upon  eternal  truths.  It  is  not  the 
life  of  Jesus  that  will  be  helpful,  but  what  we  make  of 
it;  mankind  needs  a  Christ  and  thus  each  successive 
Christian  generation  has  interpreted  the  story  of  Jesus 
in  the  spirit  of  its  highest  conception  of  Christ. 

Scholarly  investigations  of  Gospel  documents  to  de- 
termine the  facts  of  the  life  of  Jesus  as  to  his  actuality, 
his  views,  his  race,  his  character,  etc.,  may  be  of  archae- 

"That  Luke  quotes  Buddhist  texts  as  "Scriptures"  has  been 
proved  by  Mr,  Albert  J.  Edmunds  in  his  Buddhist  and  Christian 
Gospels, 


THE  JUDAISM  OF  JESUS.  121 

ological  interest,  or  may  even  possess  historical  value, 
but  they  are  absolutely  useless  for  religious  purposes. 
It  is  quite  indifferent  whether  Jesus  was  a  Jew,  or 
Galilean,  whether  a  Semite  or  an  Aryan,  and  it  is  also 
of  very  little  consequence  what  view  he  held.  Whether 
rightly  or  wrongly,  the  fact  which  we  have  to  deal  with 
is  this,  that  to  Christians  Jesus  has  become  the  Christ. 
The  personality  of  Jesus  is  a  mere  thread  upon  which 
Christians  string  the  pearls  of  their  religious  interpre- 
tations of  ideals  of  manhood,  of  the  God-man,  of  the 
deity  that  has  become  flesh. 

Historical  investigations  of  the  story  of  Jesus  are 
apt  to  disclose  conditions  which  would  not  please  us, 
for  it  seems  that  what  to  a  modern  man  is  most  repug- 
nant, his  claims  of  being  able  to  drive  out  devils,  is 
historically  the  most  assured  fact  of  his  life.  But 
what  of  it?  Religion  lets  the  dead  past  bury  its  dead. 
Jesus  is  gone,  but  Christ  remains,  and  the  living  pres- 
ence counts.  The  religion  of  the  Christians  has  for 
good  reasons  been  called,  not  Jesuism  after  the  name 
of  Jesus,  but  Christianity  after  Christ,  the  ideal  of 
humanity,  which  is  not  an  individual  being  but  a  super- 
personal  presence,  not  a  man  who  lived  and  died  at  a 
certain  time,  but  like  the  Platonic  ideas,  an  eternal  type, 
the  prototype  of  the  highest  ideal  of  manhood.  And 
the  Christian  doctrine  of  the  preexistence  of  Christ 
conveys  a  great  truth,  for  this  prototype  is  eternal  with 
God ;  it  is  the  Logos  uncreate  and  without  end ;  it  is,  to 


122  THE  PLEROMA. 

use  the  mystic  and  profound  symbolism  of  dogmatic 
Christianity,  God  the  Son  begotten  in  all  eternity  by 
God  the  Father. 


CONCLUSION. 


CHAPTER  XVIII. 

SUMMARY. 

/^CHRISTIANITY  may  be  compared  to  a  composite 
^"-^  portrait  as  made  by  Galton,  who  photographed  a 
number  of  faces  belonging  to  a  certain  class  in  such  a 
way  as  to  bring  out  their  general  type,  taking  only 
short  exposures  of  each  individual.  They  must  be  so 
posed  that  the  noses  and  the  eyes  coincide  upon  the 
sensitive  plate.  In  the  composite  picture  which  results 
therefrom,  the  individual  differences  disappear  while 
the  common  features  come  out  strongly  and  produce 
a  new  portrait,  which  is  the  ideal  type  of  all  its  com- 
ponent factors. 

The  relation  of  Christianity  to  the  ancient  pagan 
religions  is  quite  similar  to  that  which  obtains  be- 
tween the  composite  photograph  and  the  several  ex- 
posures which  produce  it.  Every  faith  of  antique 
paganism  left  an  impression  more  or  less  dim  and  every 
one  was  repudiated  with  its  individual  traits.  Never- 
theless the  underlying  principles  of  all  the  several  re- 
ligions which  were  mostly  the  same,  remained  in  the 
minds  of  the  people,  and  they  produced  a  new  type 
which  was  impressed  upon  the  dualistic  world-concep- 
tion then  prevalent.  This  picture,  a  composite  of  all 
the  previous  religions,  looked  quite  unlike  each  single 
one  of  the  originals  that  had  contributed  its  share  to 


124  THE  PLEROMA. 

the  formation  of  the  whole,  and  yet  it  was  the  suin 
total  of  their  fusion. 

The  alliance  between  Christianity  and  Judaism  was 
as  close  as  childhood  by  adoption  can  be.  Christianity 
entered  upon  the  inheritance  and  claimed  the  history 
and  traditions  of  Israel  as  its  own,  but  for  all  that,  its 
inmost  constitution  remained  different  from  Judaism. 
The  nature  of  an  adopted  child  will  not  be  that  of  its 
foster  father,  but  will  keep  true  to  the  blood  of  its  own 
parents.  The  spirit  of  Christianity  was  Gentile  from 
the  start  and  has  remained  so  in  spite  of  the  great  influ- 
ence of  the  Old  Testament  Scriptures  upon  its  further 
development. 

It  is  difficult  to  appreciate  how  closely  the  fate  of 
rivals  is  always  interlinked.  Judaism  gave  to  Chris- 
tianity its  finishing  touches  and  Christianity  incorpo- 
rated into  itself  much  of  Judaism,  yet  the  two  have 
most  fanatically  anathematized  each  other  in  the  past. 
In  one  sense  Christianity  supersedes  the  ancient  pagan- 
ism, and  in  another  sense  the  ancient  paganism  reap- 
pears in  a  new  form  in  Christian  doctrines.  Yet  the 
Church  Fathers  can  not  speak  of  the  pagans  without 
maligning  them  bitterly  and  unjustly.  It  may  be  liter- 
ally true  that  the  bitterer  the  hostility  between  two 
rivals,  the  more  similar  are  they  in  spirit ;  the  more 
marked  the  contrast  is,  the  greater  must  be  their  kin- 
ship. This  statement  almost  appears  like  a  corrobora- 
tion of  the  pantheistic  idea  of  the  identity  of  Brahma 


SUMMARY.  125 

in  all  things,  which  makes  the  red  slayer  the  same  as 
his  victim,  the  one  he  slays. 

When  we  speak  of  the  pagan  character  of  Chricti- 
anity,  we  mean  neither  to  disparage  Christianity  nor 
to  deny  the  fact  that  its  appearance  represents  a  new 
era  in  the  history  of  the  w^orld.  We  use  the  term  only 
to  bring  out  forcibly  the  truth  that  (in  spite  of  the 
important  part  played  by  Judaism)  Christianity  is  in 
all  its  essential  doctrines  the  legitimate  result  of  the 
religious  development  of  mankind, — not  of  Judaism, 
but  of  the  whole  world,  Jews  and  Gentiles,  but  mainly 
of  the  Gentiles,  i.  e.,  the  nations.  Instead  of  belittling 
Christianity,  we  must  raise  our  estimate  of  and  our 
respect  for  paganism,  which  was  neither  so  thought- 
lessly idolatrous,  nor  so  immoral  as  it  has  been  com- 
monly represented. 

The  Jewish  contribution  to  the  development  of  re- 
ligion is  more  negative  than  positive;  it  is  like  the  salt 
that  gives  the  flavor,  but  the  meat  was  furnished  by 
the  Gentiles. 

Christianity  is  like  a  big  river  which  drains  an  enor- 
mous territory.  It  has  not  one  source  but  innumerable 
sources,  and  the  character  of  its  waters  together  with 
its  course  depends  upon  the  geography  of  the  whole 
country,  not  upon  what  is  commonly  called  its  source. 
Yet  people  will  insist  on  calling  one  spring  of  the  whole 
system  the  source  of  the  river,  as  if  that  alone  had 
caused  its  existence  and  none  of  the  others  need  be 
taken  into  consideration. 


126  THE  PLEROMA. 

Sometimes  it  happens  (as  for  instance  in  the  Mis- 
sissippi-Missouri system)  that  the  largest  stream  which 
suppHes  most  of  the  water  and  has  the  longest  course 
does  not  bear  the  name  of  the  main  river,  and  the 
same  is  true  in  the  history  of  Christianity.  The  largest 
supply  of  its  substance  and  also  the  most  essential 
ingredients  so  far  as  quality  is  concerned,  viz.,  that 
portion  which  determines  the  nature  of  its  doctrines, 
is  not  furnished  by  Judaism  to  which  its  origin  is  com- 
monly traced,  but  by  paganism;  and  when  we  pass  in 
review  the  teachings  of  Jesus  himself,  as  recorded  in 
the  synoptic  gospels,  we  can  discover  nothing  that  is 
typically  Christian. 

There  is  a  joke  told  by  Austrians  on  a  Magyar  who 
is  said  to  have  traveled  to  the  source  of  the  Danube, 
where  he  stopped  the  water  so  that  for  a  little  while 
it  would  not  flow,  and  with  a  mischievous  twinkle  in 
his  eye  he  exclaimed :  ''What  a  surprise  it  will  be  to 
the  people  in  Vienna  when  the  Danube  suddenly  runs 
dry!"  This  view  of  the  origin  of  rivers  is  not  unlike 
the  current  interpretation  of  the  history  of  Christianity 
which  is  supposed  to  have  received  all  its  momentum 
either  from  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  or  the  death 
of  Jesus  on  the  cross. 

The  spread  of  the  Gospel  of  Jesus  which  we  trace  in 
its  continuity  in  ecclesiastic  history,  is  to  be  comple- 
mented by  a  consideration  of  innumerable  other  lines 
of  thought  which,  like  tributaries  of  a  stream,  have 


SUMMARY.  127 

become  merged  into  the  Christian  doctrines  and  have 
considerably  modified  them. 

We  shall  never  be  able  to  understand  the  nature  of 
the  records  of  the  life  of  Jesus  that  have  come  down 
to  us,  unless  we  bear  in  mind  how  they  were  altered 
and  interpreted  from  the  standpoint  of  these  later 
additions,  how  they  were  redacted  to  remove  what  had 
become  obsolete,  and  generally  how  they  were  again 
and  again  adapted  to  the  new  requirements. 

Christianity  is  not  the  work  of  one  man,  but  the 
product  of  ages.  When  the  inhabitants  of  the  coun- 
tries that  surround  the  Mediterranean  Sea  were,  for 
the  first  time  in  history,  united  into  one  great  empire, 
they  became  conscious  of  the  solidarity  of  the  human 
race  and  felt  the  need  of  a  universal  religion.  In  re- 
sponse to  that  need,  answers  were  given  by  thinkers, 
moral  teachers,  and  religious  leaders,  whose  doctrines 
were  more  or  less  echoed  in  the  sentiment  of  the  large 
masses.  These  large  masses  were,  after  all,  the  ulti- 
mate court  of  appeal  which  would  render  a  final  de- 
cision. 

Several  religions  originated,  but  Christianity  alone 
survived,  because  it  contained  in  a  definite  form  what 
vaguely  and  indefinitely  was  slumbering  in  the  sub- 
conscious sentiment  of  public  opinion.  Christianity 
had  gathered  into  itself  the  quintessence  of  the  past, 
and  presented  solutions  of  the  problems  of  religion 
which  were  most  compatible  with  the  new  conditions. 


128  THE  PLEROMA. 

The  irenerations  of  the  first  three  centuries  molded 
and  remolded  the  Christian  documents  until  they  ac- 
quired a  shape  that  would  be  in  accord  with  the  preva- 
lent view  of  the  times. 

The  subconscious  ideal  which  in  dim  outlines  ani- 
mated multitudes,  consisted  of  traditional  religious 
views  inherited  from  the  hoary  past.  It  was  fashioned 
by  the  old  religions  and  contained  the  ideas  of  a 
saviour,  of  the  God-man,  and  of  his  martyr  death,  of 
his  victory  over  all  ill  and  of  his  return  to  life,  of 
forgiveness  of  sins,  of  the  restitution  of  the  world,  of 
a  golden  age,  a  millennium  and  the  foundation  of  a 
kingfdom  of  God  on  earth.  Such  was  the  demand  of 
the  age,  and  Virgil's  fourth  eclogue  is  one  instance  only 
in  which  this  sentiment  finds  a  poetical  expression. 

At  the  same  time,  all  the  fables  of  mythology  were 
discredited.  The  tales  of  Heracles,  and  of  Adonis,  of 
^sculapius,  and  of  Osiris,  of  all  the  several  ancient 
saviours,  were  no  longer  believed;  they  now  appeared 
fantastical  and  had  become  untrue  and  unsatisfactory. 
A  real  saviour  of  historical  actuality  was  demanded. 
It  is  natural  that  some  people  expected  him  to  appear 
on  the  throne  as  the  restorer  of  peace  and  many  greeted 
Augustus  as  a  divine  incarnation,  the  representative  of 
God  on  earth.  But  his  successors  did  not  come  up  to 
the  expectations  of  the  people  and  Nero's  example 
alone  was  sufficient  to  overthrow  the  belief  in  the 
divinity  of  the  Emperor.  The  saviour  could  not  be  of 
this  world,  he  had  to  be  a  man,  and  yet  a  God,  not  of 


SUMMARY.  129 

secular  power,  but  king  of  a  spiritual  empire,  a  king 
of  truth,  and  so  the  personality  of  Jesus  became  more 
and  more  acceptable  as  the  true  saviour. 

The  ideal  which  constituted  the  demand  was  of  Gen- 
tile manufacture,  and  Christianity,  its  fulfilment,  is  in 
this  respect  Gentile  too;  it  was  un-Jewish,  or  pagan. 
But  being  such,  pagan  means  human;  it  denotes  what 
is  typical  of  mankind.  The  pagan  world  offered  some 
positive  solutions  of  the  old  world-problem  and  Juda- 
ism criticized  them.  Judaism  represents  the  spirit  of 
negation — albeit  a  much  needed  and  wholesome  nega- 
tion. 

We  grant  that  paganism  contains  many  objectionable 
features  and  so  the  Jewish  attitude  of  negation  is  justi- 
fied. Paganism  was  weighed  and  found  wanting. 
Christianity  then  renewed  the  old  issues  but  made  them 
pass  through  the  furnace  of  the  Jewish  condemnation 
of  pagan  mythology.  The  result  was  that  the  same 
old  beliefs  were  so  thoroughly  transfigured  as  to  render 
them  something  quite  new. 

Christianity  accepts  the  old  pagan  world-conception 
and  yet  it  is  not  a  mere  repetition  of  the  old  paganism. 
If  we  call  it  ''paganism  redivivus"  we  do  not  mean  to 
say  that  it  remains  on  the  same  level  of  primitive 
superstitions.  It  is  the  old  paganism,  broadened  into 
universalism  and  purified  by  a  severe  monotheism.  The 
old  religion  was  thereby  liberated  of  its  most  obvious 
faults,  of  narrowness,  of  crude  literalism,  of  naive 
naturalism,  and  other  childish  notions. 


130  THE  PLEROMA. 

The  God  of  evolution  works  by  laws  and  the  marvels 
of  his  dispensation  can  be  traced  in  the  natural  develop- 
ment of  affairs.  Just  as  the  snowflake  exhibits  a  design 
of  unfailing  regularity  and  great  beauty,  so  the  denoue- 
ment of  historical  events  takes  place  according  to  an 
intrinsic  necessity  which  gives  it  a  definite  direction, 
and  when  at  the  seasonable  time  definite  aims  are  at- 
tained— aims  which  have  been  prepared  by  preceding 
events — the  result  appears  like  the  work  of  a  predeter- 
mined purpose.  It  is  an  immanent  teleology  which 
dominates  the  world.  The  old  legends  naturally  appear 
like  prophecies  which  in  Jesus  Christ  have  found  their 
fulfilment,  and  so  we  can  truly  speak  of  Christianity  as 
the  pleroma. 


CHAPTER  XIX. 

THE  FUTURE  OF  CHRISTIANITY. 

NOW  THE  question  arises,  "What  will  become  of 
Christianity?" 

If  the  historical  events  of  the  past  are  to  be  taken 
as  precedents,  religions  come  and  pass  away  according 
to  definite  conditions.  They  will  have  their  beginning 
and  their  end,  and  Christianity  may  disappear  just  as 
the  religions  of  antiquity  died  out.  Christianity  had 
its  origin ;  it  reached  the  heights  of  its  dogmatic  unfold- 
ment ;  it  passed  through  several  phases,  and  at  present, 
the  current  views  of  its  most  essential  doctrines  are  fast 
changing.  We  have  lost  the  naivete  of  our  forefathers. 
Some  dogmas  have  been  considerably  modified,  others 
have  been  silently  dropped,  and  not  a  few  have  become 
purely  symbolical.  Upon  the  whole  we  may  say  that 
we  no  longer  believe  in  the  letter  of  the  credo. 

Are  these  facts  to  be  considered  as  symptoms  of 
decay  which  indicate  the  end  of  Christianity  ?  We  do 
not  think  so;  all  depends  upon  Christianity  and  its 
representatives.  If  Christianity  possesses  sufficient 
innate  strength  to  assimilate  the  new  truths  of  science, 
it  will  survive  and  emerge  from  the  present  crisis 
stronger  than  before;  but  if  it  rejects  the  new  revelation 
it  is  doomed. 

It  has  been  customary  to  characterize  scientific  truth 


132  THE  PLEROMA. 

as  secular  and  purely  human,  in  contrast  with  theolog- 
ical truth  as  divine,  but  this  conception  is  based  upon 
an  error.  The  truth  of  science,  if  it  is  genuine  truth, 
is  not  made  by  man,  it  is  superhuman.  Scientific  truths 
are  not  fashioned  by  scientists,  they  are  discovered, 
and  being  the  eternalities  of  existence,  they  represent 
the  divine  thoughts  that  sway  the  world.  Science  is 
a  genuine  revelation,  and  we  may  look  upon  it,  to  use 
theological  language,  as  the  revelation  of  the  Holy 
Spirit.  There  is  a  great  truth  in  the  saying  that  all 
sins  may  be  forgiven,  except  the  sin  against  the  Holy 
Spirit.  If  a  portion  of  mankind — a  church  or  a  sect, 
or  individuals — harden  themselves  against  the  light  of 
science,  if  they  shut  out  progress,  if  they  deny  truth, 
they  will  necessarily  stunt  their  individual  and  moral 
growth.  Their  souls  will  be  crippled  thereby,  they  will 
cut  themselves  off  from  the  tree  of  life  by  refusing  the 
guidance  of  God's  truth. 

But  the  question  before  us  is  whether  it  is  an  essen- 
tial feature  of  Christianity  to  shut  out  the  light  of 
science,  to  repudiate  progress,  and  refuse  to  learn  from 
the  living  revelation  of  God's  eternal  truths. 

Christianity  has  adapted  itself  to  new  conditions 
again  and  again;  it  has  grown  thereby  and  gradually 
developed  into  the  religion  that  it  is  to-day,  and  there 
is  no  reason  to  doubt  that  it  will  do  so  again.  The 
Christianity  of  the  future  will  be  broader,  deeper,  and 
more  in  accord  with  scientific  truth. 


THE  FUTURE  OF  CHRISTIANITY.  m 

It  is  true  enough  that  the  confessions  of  faith  made 
in  former  centuries  are  antiquated,  but  they  must  be 
regarded  as  historical  documents ;  they  were  good  for 
their  time,  but  must  make  way  for  a  more  scientific 
comprehension.  We  grant  the  claim  of  those  who  cling 
to  the  old  manner  of  thinking,  that  a  scientific  compre- 
hension is  not  Christianity  as  it  was  originally  under- 
stood, that  it  is  something  entirely  new  which  in  many 
respects  destroys  the  childlike  spirit  of  a  literal  belief. 
But  did  not  the  God  of  Christianity  himself  proclaim : 
"Lo,  I  make  all  things  new"  ? 

We,  who  have  passed  from  the  old  to  the  new,  some- 
times become  homesick  for  the  old,  comfortable  belief 
when  man  was  so  easily  satisfied  with  the  symbol,  with 
the  parable,  with  a  poetical  figiu*e  and  a  pious  senti- 
ment. Even  the  remembrance  of  those  days  has  re- 
mained dear  to  us.  Goethe,  who  experienced  this 
change  of  mind  himself,  has  repeatedly  described  this 
attitude  in  glowing  terms.  Faust,  on  hearing  the 
Easter  bells  proclaiming  the  resurrection  of  Christ, 
thinks  of  the  faith  of  his  childhood,  and  he  regrets 
that  the  message  has  no  longer  a  meaning  for  him  since 
his  belief  is  gone.  Yet  the  vision  of  the  faith  of  his 
earlier  days  haunts  him.  He  thinks  of  his  unbounded 
trust  in  God's  eternal  love,  of  seeking  communion  with 
Him  in  solitude  and  of  the  unspeakable  rapture  of 
fervent  prayer : 

"Und  ein  Gebet  war  briinstiger  Genuss." 


134.  THE  PLEROMA. 

If  the  belief  in  the  dogma  is  gone,  shall  we  at  the 
same  time  discard  that  religious  sentiment  which  has 
been  so  important  a  guide  to  mankind  in  former  cen- 
turies? Is  that  rapturous  devotion  that  thrills  the  indi- 
vidual and  adjusts  his  relation  to  the  cosmos  really  a 
fantastic  illusion,  of  which  we  must  rid  ourselves  in 
future  ? 

Christianity  has  been  the  sacred  vessel  in  which  the 
noble  sentiments  of  religion  have  been  treasured;  and 
will  not  the  contents  be  spilled  if  the  cup  be  broken? 
Does  the  breakdown  of  dogmatism  really  forebode  the 
end  of  religion? 

A  prominent  French  scholar,  M.  J.  Guyau,  has  writ- 
ten a  book  which  created  a  sensation,  and  its  tenets 
have  been  adopted  by  innumerable  freethinkers  the 
world  over.  It  is  entitled  "The  Irrcligion  of  the  Fu- 
ture," and  Guyau  claims  in  it  that,  in  ages  to  come, 
mankind  will  be  without  any  religion,  for  science  will 
have  destroyed  the  strongholds  of  the  old  faith  one 
after  another  until  nothing  is  left  and  the  formulae  of 
natural  law  will  rule  supreme.  His  views  seem  quite 
plausible  to  those  who  have  grown  up  in  a  country 
where  people  have  only  the  choice  between  the  irrecon- 
cilable contrast  of  ultra-montanism  on  the  one  hand, 
and  the  librcs  penseiirs  on  the  other.  In  France,  people 
who  hold  a  middle  ground  are  so  rare,  that  during  the 
last  half  century  they  have  played  no  prominent  part 
in  public  life.  In  Protestant  countries  conditions  are 
different.     The  large  majorities  do  not  favor  either 


THE  FUTURE  OF  CHRISTIANITY.  135 

extreme,  but  are  in  a  state  of  transition  that  will  result 
in  a  new  and  higher  conception.  Protestantism  has  its 
weak  points,  but  it  has  guided  mankind  on  the  right 
path  and  prepared  a  faith  that  will  no  longer  stand  in 
contradiction  to  science. 

Protestantism  is  not  the  end  or  final  state  of  religion. 
It  is  a  movement  which  from  the  start  was  not  con- 
scious of  its  final  aims.  While  its  leaders  tried  only 
to  bring  about  a  reform,  they  actually  introduced  a 
new  principle  and  led  religion  into  a  new  phase  of  its 
development.  It  was  originally  a  mere  negation  of 
some  features  in  the  administration  of  the  Roman 
Catholic  Church.  The  very  name  indicates  that  it 
started  as  a  protest  to  the  old;  but  it  is  bound  to  take 
the  consequences  of  its  first  step,  which  is  the  recogni- 
tion of  scientific  truth,  of  liberty  of  conscience,  of  the 
duty  of  inquiry.  This  will  lead  to  a  new  assertion,  and 
its  position  will  advance  to  a  firmer  and  more  enduring 
foundation. 

Unless  the  very  nature  of  mankind  changes,  the 
future  of  history  will  not  be  irreligious.  On  the  con- 
trary, it  will  be  more  truly  religious  than  ever.  It  will 
discard  those  superstitious  elements  that  are  so  often 
regarded  as  the  essential  features  of  religion,  and  will 
insist,  w^ith  greater  emphasis,  on  essential  truths.  We 
are  bound  to  reach  the  bottom  rock  where  religion  will 
have  nothing  to  fear  from  the  critique  of  science. 

We  venture  to  say  that  the  new  movement  will 


136  THE  PLEROMA. 

spring  from  the  very  orthodox  ranks,  which,  bye  and 
bye,  will  unhesitatingly  recognize  all  the  truth  of  sci- 
ence and  reinterpret  the  old  in  the  spirit  of  the  new. 
They  will  retain  all  the  good  of  their  traditions  without 
making  the  slightest  concession  to  either  hypocrisy  or 
equivocation,  and  without  sacrificing  the  uplift  of  gen- 
uine devotion.  In  a  word,  the  future  of  religion  will 
be  a  reinterpretation  of  the  old,  and  it  is  natural  that 
all  religions  will  convergingly  tend  towards  the  same 
goal. 


CHAPTER  XX. 

RELIGION  ETERNAL. 
THE    FUTURE. 

THE  RELIGION  of  the  future  will  have  to  satisfy 
the  essential  needs  of  the  human  heart.  We  drift 
tempest-tossed  on  the  ocean  of  life,  and  we  need  guid- 
ance and  comfort  and  encouragement.  In  the  face  of 
the  unrest  that  surrounds  us,  we  want  to  have  the 
assurance  of  a  firm  ground  wherein  our  anchor  can 
catch.  We  want  to  know  our  goal  and  the  direction  in 
which  we  have  to  steer.  All  this  must  be  supplied  by 
religion,  and  where  our  knowledge  is  insufficient,  faith 
steps  in. 

Religion  is  inborn  in  every  soul  in  the  same  way  as 
gravity  is  an  inalienable  part  of  all  matter.  Every 
particle  that  exists  is  interlinked  with  the  whole  of  the 
cosmos.  Its  momentum  is  determined  in  the  exact  pro- 
portion of  its  weight,  of  its  position,  and  generally  of 
its  relation  to  the  All.  The  innate  energy  of  every 
particle,  every  molecule,  every  atom,  presses  forth  in 
one  direction  or  another  beyond  its  own  limits  as  if  it 
were  yearning  beyond  itself.  No  piece  of  matter  is  an 
existence  in  itself;  its  nature  and  its  movements  are 
conditioned  by  the  rest  of  the  universe  and  it  can  find 
the  fulfilment  of  its  longing  only  outside  its  own  being. 
In  the  same  way,  every  sentient    soul  yearns  beyond 


138  THE  PLEROMA. 

itself  and  becomes  easily  conscious  of  the  fact  that  it  is 
only  a  part  of  an  immeasurably  great  whole,  of  the  All 
that  stretches  forth  into  unknown  infinitudes,  and  that 
the  significance  of  its  life  lies  outside  the  sphere  of  its 
ego.  This  All-feeling  of  the  individual,  this  panpathy, 
is  religion,  and  religion  is  a  natural  presence  in  every 
human  breast. 

Religion  grows  up  in  unconscious  spontaneity  and 
asserts  itself  first  in  sentiment.  It  is  so  strong  that 
it  may  be  counted  as  the  deepest  passion  of  which  man 
is  capable.  It  is  possessed  of  a  motive  power  that 
excels  all  other  passions,  even  love  not  excepted,  and 
can,  if  misdirected,  lead  to  deeds  that  would  otherwise 
be  impossible,  such  as  sacrifice  of  what  is  dearest  to 
the  heart,  even  the  bodily  sacrifice  of  oneself  or  of 
one's  own  children  on  the  altar  of  a  deity  who  is 
believed  to  demand  such  offerings. 

But  religion  is  not  merely  feeling.  Religion  enters 
into  every  fibre  of  man's  spiritual  existence,  and 
throughout  the  development  of  human  actions  it  re- 
mains the  factor  that  adjusts  the  relation  of  the  indi- 
vidual to  the  All.  It  grows  and  matures  with  the 
growth  and  maturity  of  man.  It  weaves  out  of  his 
experiences  a  world-conception  in  which  it  appoints 
him  to  his  place,  assigns  his  duties  and  furnishes  direc- 
tion for  his  conduct. 

Religion  teaches  us  that  we  are  parts  only  of  a  great 
whole.  We  are  not  alone  in  the  world.  Not  only  is 
our  bodily  existence  at  every  moment  determined  by  its 


RELIGION  ETERNAL.  139 

surroundings,  but  our  souls  also  are  interlinked  with 
the  fate  of  others,  of  creatures  more  or  less  like  us, 
sentient  beings  who  have  developed  by  our  side  as 
formations  parallel  to  us,  in  whose  company  we  have 
become  such  as  we  are.  Our  own  destiny  extends  to 
them,  and  makes  them  parts  of  this,  our  extended  self. 
Neither  are  we  the  beginning  nor  the  end  of  life.  We 
come  into  being  and  disappear,  while  the  whole,  from 
which  we  have  emerged,  remains.  From  this  state  of 
things  we  learn  to  treat  our  fellows  with  consideration, 
yea,  with  respect,  to  look  upon  the  past  with  reverence 
and  upon  the  future  with  solicitude. 

Our  neighbor  is  our  alter-ego.  No  one  is  a  stranger 
to  us;  all  are  our  brothers  and  we  cannot  maltreat 
them  without  hurting  ourselves.  The  same  truth  that 
holds  good  for  space,  is  applicable  to  time.  We  are  a 
mere  phase  in  the  life  of  the  whole.  We  have  grown 
from  the  past  and  we  owe  to  it  our  entire  existence. 
In  fact,  we  are  the  past  as  it  continues  in  the  present. 
The  past  has  furnished  even  the  potentialities  from 
which  we  develop  our  noblest  aspirations.  Our  very 
selves  are  additions  made  by  us  in  building  up  the 
future,  and  in  the  future  we  continue.  The  future  is 
the  harvest  which  we  expect.  It  is  our  own  existence 
as  we  mold  it,  and  all  the  duties  we  have  in  life  are  for 
the  future.  In  the  future  lie  the  mansions  which  our 
souls  build  up,  therein  to  live  when  our  bodies  have 
fallen  to  dust. 


140  THE  PLEROMA. 

The  function  of  religion,  however,  goes  deeper  still. 
This  entire  world  is  the  actualization  of  eternal  types. 
It  develops  according  to  law  and  brings  into  existence 
those  possibilities  which,  in  philosophy,  are  called  Pla- 
tonic Ideas.  Accordingly,  man  is  not  a  mere  congeries 
of  atoms,  he  is  more  than  a  corporeal  conglomeration 
of  matter,  he  is  the  actualization  of  the  type  of  his 
personality;  his  essential  and  characteristic  being  con- 
sists in  the  ideas  he  thinks,  in  the  aims  he  pursues,  and 
in  the  significance  which  he  possesses  for  the  whole 
movement  of  human  life. 

In  every  one  of  us  there  is  something  eternal  that 
has  made  its  appearance  in  corporeal  and  visible  shape, 
and  no  thinking  man  will  identify  himself  with  the 
dust  of  his  body;  he  will  seek  his  real  being  in  his 
volitions,  his  aims,  his  ideals — in  all  that  constitutes 
his  spiritual  nature. 

Religion  reminds  us  of  the  eternal  background 
against  which  the  fleeting  phenomena  of  the  material 
world  take  shape.  The  eternal  of  man's  life  is  the 
essential  part  of  his  being  transfiguring  the  transient 
in  which  it  is  actualized. 

Man  is  not  born  a  philosopher.  He  grows  up  from 
primitive  conditions  and  is  compelled  to  act  and  adjust 
his  conduct  even  before  he  knows  the  world  or  himself. 
And  so  religion,  which,  as  we  have  seen,  animates  his 
entire  being  and  unconsciously  dominates  all  his  senti- 
ments from  the  very  bottom  of  his  heart,  comes  to  him 


RELIGION  ETERNAL.  141 

in  the  shape  of  allegories  and  symbols.  He  feels  relig- 
ion before  he  formulates  it  in  doctrines,and  the  first 
doctrines  are  naturally  mere  formulations  of  the  sym- 
bols wherein  truth  first  dawns  upon  him.  But  the 
higher  man  rises,  the  better  he  understands  how  to 
distinguish  between  symbol  and  truth,  between  letter 
and  spirit,  between  the  parable  and  its  meaning.  In 
the  dogmatic  state  we  were  like  children,  nursed  with 
fairy  tales  and  parables ;  but  in  manhood  we  shall  see 
the  truth  face  to  face  and  shall  have  a  clear  and  une- 
quivocal comprehension  of  it. 

That  faith  of  the  future  which  we  know  must  come, 
will  certainly  not  be  less  religious  than  its  former 
phases.  It  will  be  simply  the  fulfilment  of  the  present 
which  we  then  shall  regard  as  mere  preparations  for  it, 
as  mere  stations  on  the  road  to  the  goal — the  new 
pleroma,  the  pleroma  expected  to-day. 

*     *     * 

We  are  aware  that  Christianity  is  not  the  only  relig- 
ion in  the  world,  and  its  rivals,  from  their  standpoint, 
have  made  honest  endeavors  to  reach  the  truth  in  their 
own  ways.  In  every  part  of  the  world  man  has  used 
the  light  at  his  disposal.  In  consideration  of  this  fact 
we  can  no  longer  look  upon  one  religion  as  possessing 
the  absolute  truth,  and  upon  all  others  as  inventions 
of  Satan.  We  know  that  all  of  them  possess  more  or 
less  of  the  truth  and  that  not  one  of  them  is  perfect. 

We  do  not  wish  to  be  misunderstood;  we  do  not 


142  THE  PLEROMA. 

say  that  all  religions  are  alike;  we  only  say  that  all 
travel  toward  the  same  goal ;  they  have  reached  differ- 
ent stations  and  are  more  or  less  advanced.  The 
nearer  to  truth,  to  the  living  truth  that  teaches  the 
right  way  of  living,  the  higher  they  are. 

There  is  a  stage  of  development  in  which  we  lose  the 
desire  to  glorify  our  own  religion  at  the  expense  of 
others ;  and  we  look  with  a  smile  upon  the  anxiety  of 
the  sectarian  who  magnifies  the  merit  of  his  own  sect 
and  delights  in  defaming  others,  although  he  does  it 
in  maiorem  Dei  gloriani  in  the  hope  of  thus  pleasing 
the  deity  whom  he  serves.  There  is  a  higher  ideal 
than  our  own  church  affiliation.  It  is  truth,  and  the 
God  of  truth  is  higher  than  our  God,  higher  than  our 
limited  conception  of  deity. 

We  learn  more  and  more  to  give  honor  to  the  truth 
wherever  it  may  be  found,  and  under  the  influence  of 
this  sentiment  a  brotherly  feeling  has  originated  which 
gave  birth  to  the  Religious  Parliament  in  1893,  in  which 
even  the  most  orthodox  churches  took  part.  It  is  an 
actual  instance  wherein  representatives  of  all  the  great 
faiths  of  the  world  came  together  in  tolerance  and  kind- 
ness. Every  one  came  to  explain  his  own  faith,  not  to 
disparage  that  of  others ;  nor  was  there  any  intention 
to  break  down  or  to  replace  the  old  traditions  by  a  new 
religion. 

The  new,  when  it  comes,  will  have  to  develop  from 
the  old,  and  it  will  practically  have  to  be  the  old  in  a 


RELIGION   ETERNAL.  143 

new  interpretation.  We  must  build  the  future  from 
the  past,  and  we  have  to  utihze  the  materials  which  we 
have  on  hand. 

We  deem  it  possible  that  several  religions  may  con- 
tinue side  by  side  to  the  end  of  the  world,  and  there 
would  be  no  harm  in  a  disparity  in  name,  institutions 
and  organizations.  These  things  are  not  the  essential 
parts  of  religion.  It  might  be  good  for  the  world,  if 
rivalry  would  remain  between  different  churches,  dif- 
ferent races,  different  nations.  There  can  be  no  ob- 
jection to  a  divergence  of  types;  but,  after  all.  what- 
ever may  be  the  names  of  religions  and  denominations, 
their  essential  doctrines,  the  meaning  of  their  ceremo- 
nies and  above  all  their  moral  ideals  will  have  to  be- 
come the  same  throughout  the  world,  for  these  are  the 
essentials  of  religion,  and  must  accord  with  the  eternal 
truths  of  cosmic  existence. 

The  Church  universal  of  the  future  need  not  be  one 
large  centralized  body,  it  need  not  be  one  power  con- 
solidated into  one  organization,  it  need  not  be  governed 
from  one  central  point,  but  it  must  be  one  in  spirit,  it 
must  be  one  in  love  of  truth,  one  in  brotherhood,  and 
one  in  the  earnestness  of  moral  endeavor. 

I  conclude  these  remarks  on  the  nature  of  the  re- 
ligion of  the  future  with  the  words  which,  as  secretary 
of  the  Religious  Parliament  Extension,  I  pronounced 
at  the  decennial  celebration  of  the  World's  Religious 
Parliament  in  1903 : 


M4  THE  PLEROMA. 

"Let  us  all  join  in  the  work  of  extending  true  re- 
ligion. Let  us  greet,  not  only  our  brethren,  but  also 
those  who,  in  sincerity,  disagree  with  us,  and  let  us 
thus  prepare  a  home  in  our  hearts  for  truth,  love  and 
charity,  so  that  the  kingdom  of  heaven,  which  is  as 
near  at  hand  to-day  as  it  was  nineteen  hundred  years 
ago,  may  manifest  itself  within  us,  and  become  more 
and  more  the  reformatory  power  of  our  public  and 
private  life." 


COLLATERAL    READING. 

Articles  on  Subjects  Relating  to  the  Origin  of  Christianity. 

By  Dr.  Paul  Carus. 

Angelus  SiLzsivs.— Open  Court  XXII,  291-297.* 
Anubis,  Seth,  and  CiirasT. — Open  Court  XV,  65. 
Apocrypha  of  the  Old  Testament. — Open  Court,  IX,  4700. 
Assyrian  Poems  on  the    Immortality    of    the     Soul. — Open 

Court,  XIX,  107. 
Babism:  Behaism  in  Chicago. — Open  Court,  XX,  755. 
Babylonian  and  Hebrew  Views  on  Man's  Fate  After  Death. 

—Open  Court,  XV,  346. 
Babylonian  Myths,  Prof.  Tiele  On.— O/'cn  Court  XV,  436. 
Bride  of  Christ,  the.     Illustrated.— O/'c;?  Court  XXI,  449-464.* 
Caaba,  The— Open  Court  XVII,  151. 

Chastity  and  Phallic  Worship. — Open  Court,  XVII,  611. 
Christ  and  Christian. — Open  Court  XXII,  110. 
Christ  Ideal  and  the  Golden  Age,  the. — Open  Court,  XXII, 

328. 
Christian  Conception  of  Death,  the. — Open  Court,  XI,  752. 
Christian  Doctrine  of  Resurrection,  the. — Monisi  XV,  115. 
Christian  Prophecy,  the  Number  t  in. — Monist  XVI,  415. 
Christian  Sunday,  the. — Open  Court  XX,  360 
Christianity  as  the  Pleroma. — Monist  XTV ,  120  * 
Christianity,  Message  of  Buddhism  to. — Open  Court  XX,  755. 
Conception  of  the  Shul  and  Belief  in  Resurrection  Among 

the  Egyptians. — Monist  XV,  409. 
Creed,  the  Revision  of  a. — Open  Court  III,  2075. 
Dances  of  Death. — Open  Court  XII,  40. 
Death  and  Resurrection. — Open  Court  XIII,  495. 
Death  and  the  De.\d,  the  Skeleton  as  a  Representation  of. — 

Monist  XXII,  G20. 
Death  in  Religious  Art. — Open  Court  XI,  678. 
De.ath,  Modern  Representations  of. — Open  Court  XII,  101. 
*Republished  in  book  form. 

145 


146  COLLATERAL  READING. 

Doctrine  of  Resurrection,  and  its  Significance  in  the  New 

Christianity,  the. — Open  Court,  IX,  4738. 
Dogma  of  the  Trinity.— O/'rn  Court  XI,  85. 
Dogma,  the  Clergy's  Duty  of  Allegiance  to,  and  the  Struggle 

Between  World-Conceptions. — Monist  II,  278. 
Easter,  the  Festival  of  Life  Victorious. — Open  Court,  XVI, 

193. 
Eschatology  in  Christian  Art. — Open  Court  XI,  40L 
Fairy-tale  Element  in  the  Bible,  the. — Monist  XI,  405,  500. 
Food  of  life  and  the  Sacrament,  the. — Monist  X,  246,  343. 

Gnosticism    in    its    Relation   to   Christianity. — Monist   VIII, 

502. 
God,  Essay  on,  and  Discussion. — Monist  IX,  106. 
Greek  Mysteries,  a  Preparation  for  Christianity. — Monist  XI, 

87. 
Greek  Religion  and  Mythology,  Three    Articles     on. — Open 

Court,  XIV,  513,  577.  641,  705;  XV.  1. 
Haecxel's  Monism. — Monist  II,  598. 
Haeckel's  Monism,  and  the  Ideas  of  God  and  Immortality. 

—Open  Court  V,  2957. 
Haeckel's  Theses  for  a  Monistic  Alliance. — Monist  XVI,  120. 
Harmony  of  the  Spheres. — Open  Court  XX,  220. 
Holy  Edict  of  K'ang  Hi. — Monist  XIV,  733. 
Jew  and  Gentile  in  Early  Christianity. — Monist  XI,  267. 
Lord's  Prayer,  the. — Open  Court  XII,  491. 
Mazdaism,  the  Religion  of    the    Ancient     Persians. — Open 

Court  XI,  141. 
Mesha's  Declaration  of  Independence. — Open  Court  XVII,  662. 
Mithraism    and    its    Influence    Upon    Christianity. — Open 

Court  XVII.  104. 
Mysticism,  Truth  in. — Mon.  XVII,  75-10. 
Mysticism,  Value  of.— Open   Court  III,  2039-2040. 

(Republished  in  Homilies  of  Science.) 
Naran-Sin's  Stele — Open  Court  XVIII,  563. 
Nativity,  the.— Open  Court  XIII,  710:  XIV.  46. 
Ox  AND  the  Ass  in  Illustrations  of  the  Nativity,  the. — Open 

Court,  XIV,  46. 
Pagan  Elements   of   Christianity  and  the   Significance  op 

Jesvs.— Monist  XII,  416. 


COLLATERAL  READING.  147 

Personality  of  Jesus,  and  His  Historical  Relation  to  Chris- 
tianity, THE. — Monist  X,  573. 

Philosophical  Parties  and  Their  Significance  as  Factors  in 
the  Evolution  of  Thought. — Open  Court  XI,  564. 

Pro  Domo.— O/'t'u  Court,  XIX,  577. 

Religion  of  Proto-Semitism,  the. — Open  Court  XVIII,  421. 

Religious  Character  of  Monism. — Open  Court  II,  1381. 

Resurrection,    a    Hyper-  Historical    Fact,   the. — Open    Court 
XIX,  690. 

Resurrection,   Festival  of,    (Republished  in  Homilies   of   Sci- 
ence).—C>/'e»  Court  IV,  2179. 

Rosetta  Stone,  the.— O/'ck  Court  XVIII,  531 ;  XIX,  89. 

Sampson,  Mythical  Elements  in  the  Story  of. — Monist  XVII, 
33.* 

Seven,  the  Sacred  Number. — Open  Court  XV,  335,  412c 

SiLOAM   Inscription. — Open  Court  XVII,  662. 

Stone  Worship.— O/) en  Court  XVIII,  45,  661 ;  XX,  289. 

Theopiij'-Nies. — open  Court  XX,  705. 

Third  Commandment. — Open  Court  XVIII,  502. 

Trinity,  the. — Open  Court  XVI,  612. 

Trinity  Idea,  the. — Open  Court  XI,  85. 

Vera  Icon,  King  Abgar  and  St.  Veronica,  the. — Open  Court 
XXII,  663. 

Widow's  Two  Mites,  the. — Open  Court  XVII,  352. 

Yahveii  and  Manitou. — Monist  IX,  382. 

Yahveh,  the  Oracle;  the  Urim   and  Tkummim,  the  Ephod. 
and  the  Breastplate  of  Judgment. — Monist  XVII,  365. 

Zoroaster's  Contributions  to  Christianity. — Open  Court  XIX, 
409. 

Zoroastrian  Religion  and  the  Bible. — Open  Court  XX,  434. 
•Republished  in  book  form. 


INDEX. 


Aberrations,   religious,    5. 

Abiram,   S5. 

Abraham,    84. 

Acts  of  the  Apostles,  Simon 
Magus,  Philip  and  Peter,  m 
the,   43,   47. 

Actualization  of  eternal  types, 
140. 

Adam,  snake's  promise  to,  39, 

Adonis,    16,    29,    128. 

Advent  of  Jesus,  second,  51. 

.^sculapius,  and  the  serpent 
symbol  of  healing.  39;  discred- 
ited as  a  saviour,  128. 

Ahrlman,  17. 

Ahura   Mazda,    17. 

Alexander  the  Great  and  the  ad- 
justment of  state  religions,  27; 
William  the  Conqueror  and, 
29. 

All  inter-relation  of  the  indi- 
vidual   and    the,    138ff. 

Allegories  and  symbols,  truth 
dawns   in,    140    f. 

All-feeling,  true  significance  of. 
138. 

Alliance  between  Christianity 
and  Judaism,  nature  of  the, 
124. 

American  Indians,  primitive,  62. 

Ananias,   47. 

Ancestry,  of  Christian  thought. 
8;  of  foreign  nations,  130  f;  of 
Jesus,   according  to  Paul,   112. 

Ancient     Hellas,     influence     of 

Eastern  religion  on,  27. 
"Anointed     One,     the,"     not    by 

descent,  but  by  grace,  113  f. 
Antichrist,      Simonlan      founder 

called,   44. 
Antiquated  confessions  of  faith, 

historical   value   of,    133. 
Antiquity,    what   we   owe   to,    9; 
religions  of  classical,  48,  54. 

Anu,   IS. 


Apella,    the   Jew,    105. 

Apocrypha,   111. 

ApoUonius    of   Tyana,    5. 

Apollos,  111. 

Aristotle,   S. 

Aryans,  Semitic,  59  ;  were  David 

and  Jesus?  87,   114f. 
Ascension  of  Christ,   51. 
Asceticism,        of        manichseism, 

42;    of   the   Essenes,    46. 
Asia    Minor,    38,    45. 
Asiatic,     present     tendency     to 

extol    the,    S. 
Aspirations  spring  from  past  in- 
heritance,  our  noblest,   139. 
Assurbanipal,    49. 
Assyrians,   defeat  of  the,   91. 
Augustan  Age,  world-conception 

of  the,  4. 
Augustine,    St.     quoted     on     the 

definition    of    Christianity,    20, 

46. 
Augustus,  called  a  saviour,  22  f, 

128. 
Author's      use      of      the      term 

"pagan",    7-8. 

Aztecs,  62. 


B 


Baal,    86. 

Babylon,  Christianity  prepared 
in,  49;  monotheistic  tendencies 
in',  83,  90. 

Babylonian,  calendar,  15; 
hymns,  38;  heroes,  miraculous 
birth  of,  49;  inscriptions.  51; 
hero,  the  Jesus  of  the  Reve- 
lation a,  74  ;  poem  on  immor- 
tality,  107. 

Basis  of  the  religion  of  Judea, 
93f. 

Behaism,  new  religion  of  Persia, 
111. 


Bel,  the  Christ,  18,  64,  77. 


149 


150 


INDEX. 


Belief  in  the  traditional  God 
discredited  after  Alexander's 
conquest,    27. 

Benjamin,  territory  of,  S8. 

Bethlehem,   69. 

Biblical  sources,  and  the  history 
of   Judah,    S8. 

Blasphemy,  its  original  mean- 
ing, 21. 

Bodhi,  the  38  ;  and  Christhood, 
56;   and   gnosis,    57. 

Bodhisattva,  potentiality  of  the 
Bodhi,    56. 

Book  of  the  Dead,  the,   14. 

Book,  the,  of  Henoch,  61  ;  of 
Laws,  S>3   f. 

Brahma,  18;  identified  in  all 
things,    124f. 

Breakdown  of  dogmati.'^m  not 
the    end   of   religion,    tiie,    134. 

Buddha,  18;  Christian  char- 
acter of,  76;  descent  of  Jesus 
and    of,    114. 

Buddha-conception,  the  climax 
of  oriental   thought,  57. 

Buddhism,    no   contradiction    in, 

56. 

Buddhist,  the  bodhi,  38,  40; 
moral    injunctions,     76. 


c 


Calamities  so-called,  two  great 
Jewish,    99f. 

Calculus  and  Christianity,  pre- 
requisites of,   66  f. 

"Calves  of  Dan  and  Bethel," 
the.  86. 

Calvin,    23. 

Cambridge  Codex,  quoted  on 
the   Holy  Ghost,    55. 

Canaanite  woman,  the,  and 
Jesus,   115. 

Canon    of     Reason     and     Virtue 

78. 

Catacombs  of  Rome  contain 
many  pre-Christian  symbols, 
29. 

Categories    and    religion,    65. 

Catholic  theology  and  the  man- 
god  redeemer,  63;  faith,  Jew- 
ish and  heathen  faiths  in- 
cluded in,  66. 


Celestials,       and       the       dragon 

of    the    Revelations,    69. 
Celsus,  44. 

Chauvinistic  tribal  patriotism  of 
the  Jews,  97. 

Cherithites,    87. 

Childlilre  faith  and  scientific 
comprehension,  132  f. 

Chosen  people,  the,  83;  every 
nation,  96  ;  moral  signifi- 
cance of  the  idea.  102;  why 
rejected  by  God,   106. 

Christ,  all  things  in.  1;  as  Or- 
pheus, 29;  the  psychical  and 
the  spiritual,  39;  was  a  Naza- 
rene,  45;  as  the  Pleroma,  49  f; 
pagan  saviours  and,  52;  St. 
Paul's  conception  of,  69;  pre- 
decessors of,  76;  the  risen,  SO; 
world-mission  of,  115;  the 
Logos,  the  Saviour  of  man- 
kind,   120. 

Christhood  acquired  by  Jesus, 
55;    eternal,    56. 

Christian  ceremonies,  pagan 
origin  of,  10;  doctrines  pre- 
served by  critics,  41;  Era,  ten- 
dencies at  the  beginning  of 
the,  47,  61;  typical  features. 
79;  documents  remolded  ac- 
cording to  prevalent  ideas, 
128. 

Christianity,  Biblical  reports  of 
its  origin,  1;  predetermined 
by  existing  spiritual  condi- 
tions, 2;  traditional  and  cur- 
rent vieVvS  of  its  origin,  2f; 
a  grandchild  of  paganism,  3  ; 
Paul,  or  Jesus,  founder  of'.' 
3f;  the  religion  of  the  lowly, 
5-6;  pagan  traditions  fused  on 
the  background  of  Judaism,  8; 
defined  by  St.  Augustine,  20; 
helped  by  Alexander's  con- 
quest of  Asia,  31;  ascetic 
tendencies  of,  42;  influenced 
by  the  Zabian  movement,  45; 
gnosticism  the  mother  of,  48; 
prepared  among  the  Gentiles. 
59f;  came  to  fulfill,  63;  not 
a  revamped  paganism.  64;  in 
the  struggle  for  supremacj', 
79;  connection  of  Judaism 
and,  81;  due  to  Jewish  per- 
sistence, 98;  significance  of 
the  dispersion  of  the  Jews  for, 
101;  the  historical  Jesus,  and 
modern,  120;  like  a  composite 
photograph,   123;   pagan   char- 


INDEX. 


151 


actcr  no  disparagement,  125; 
not  the  work  of  one  man,  127; 
why  it  conquered,  12Tf;  pagan 
from  the  start,  129;  wliat  will 
become  of,  131;  the  living 
revelation  of  truth  through 
science,  132. 
Christians,  Jewish,  22;  of  the 
New  Testament,  influenced  by 
the  Persian  system,  61. 
Christologv    and    the    historical 

Jesus,   liOf. 
Chronology,   Christian,  1. 
Churcli     historians,     4  ;     fathers, 
65,    124  ;    universal    of   the   fu- 
ture,    14  3. 
Church  of  England,  a  theologian 

of   the,    60. 
Circumcision,  an  antiquated  and 
barbarous  custom,  84;  a  pagan 
institution,   102f. 
Civilization,  western,  factors  of, 
9;    before    the    Christian    era, 
47. 
Clans,    Judah  a  conglomeration 

of,   88. 
Classical      Greece     and      Rome, 

trinity  idea  in,  18. 
Clement,   44. 
Cleobolus,    43. 
Colonies,     post-exilic     Jew,     in 

Egypt,   106. 
Communists,       the       Nazarenes 

were,    47. 
Comparative  religion,    study  of, 

60. 
Congeries     of     atoms,     man     is 

more    than   a,    140. 
Conquests  often  hasten  religious 

development,   30. 
Constantino    wrongly    surnamed 

the  Great,    6. 
Consummation,    and   the   notion 

of  Babylonian  cycles,  50. 
Continuity    of   cause   and    effect 

unbroken,    68. 
Contrast    between    Jewish    Uni- 
tarianism,    and   gentile   Trini- 
tarianism,   111. 
Cornill,   Prof.   Carl  W.,   86,   93. 
Cosmic    existence,    all    parts    in 

accord,  143. 
Cosmos  and  of  religion,  laws  of 
the,    137f. 


Country,     the     Jews     a    people 

without  a,   99. 
Court  of  appeal,  the  masses  are 

the  ultimate,    127. 
"Credat  Judaeus  Apella,"  105. 
Credo,  belief  in  the  letter  of  the, 
fast  disappearing,  131. 

Cress,  and  Syrian  Easter  Cus- 
toms, 16. 

Critique  of  science,  truth  has 
nothing  to  fear  from  the,  135. 

Crito,   76. 

Cross   of  Jesus,    the   mystic,    80. 

Crucified  One,  slaves  and  the, 
SOf. 

Crucifixion  of  Jesus,  69;  as  a 
sun  offering.  SU;  the  Disper- 
sion took  place  before  the, 
105. 

Cuneiform  inscriptions,  49,  51, 
92. 

Curse  upon  the  Jews,  the  dis- 
persion considered  a,  99;  a 
romantic    conception,    104. 

Cycles,  Babylonian  notion  of, 
49. 

Cyrus  and  tlie  Jews  of  the 
Exile,   60. 


D 

Danube  river,  the,  126. 

David,  the  hero  of  Israel,  85; 
an  Aryan?  87:  the  ancestry  of 
Jesus  and,   112. 

Death  and  resurrection,  of 
Osiris,  14;  of  Marduk,  15;  of 
Tammuz,  Adonis,  Melkarth, 
Samson,  and  Christ,    16. 

Decav  of  Christianity,  symptoms 
of  "the,   131. 

Deities  Lords  of  the  Lamenta- 
tion,'50. 

Deity,  Jewish  designations  of, 
102. 

Demeter,    28. 

Demon,  the  good,  on  Abraxas 
gems,  39. 

Denouement  of  historical  events, 
130. 

Deuteronomy,  wizards  con- 
demned in,   107. 


152 


INDEX. 


De  Wette,  Wilhelm  Martin  Le- 
beiecht,  94. 

Dharma,  the  IS. 

Dialectic,    65. 

Diaspora,  a  misleading  name, 
iJ9,   101;    (see  Dispersion). 

Die  Keilinschriften  und  das  alte 
Testament,  49. 

Dionysos,  28,  29,  5G. 

Dispersion  of  the  Jews,  Mes- 
siah of  the,  61  ;  important  to 
Christianity,  81,  'j9;  Profs. 
Sayce  and  Graetz  quoted  on 
the,  99f;  Karl  Vollers  quoted. 
101;  real  problem  of,  101;  true 
cause  of,  103;  all  nations  scat- 
ter,  103f£. 

Divinity  of  the  Mosaic  law,  118. 
Doctrines,     Persian    and    Baby- 
lonian,   46. 

Documents  remolded,  Chris- 
tian, 128. 

"Dogs"     and     "swine,"     Jewish 

epithets   for   Gentiles,    116. 
Dositheus,   43. 

Dove,  the,  as  the  spiritual 
Christ,  39. 

Dragon,  the,  as  the  principle  of 
evil  in  Parseeism,  39;  of  the 
Revelation  of  St.  John,  69. 

"Dread  lullaby"  at  the  cradle  of 
the  Jewish  nation,  100. 

Drift  of  the  age,  Manichaeism 
and   the,    42. 

Dualism,  in  the  beginning  of  the 
Christian  era,  10;  a  necessary 
religious  phase,    59. 

Dualistic  Christianity,  9. 

Duality    resolved    into   a    higher 

unity,    59. 


Easter,  the  Babylonian,  15  : 
customs  in  Syria  and  Tyre, 
IG;    a    Teutonic    word,    17. 

Easter  bells  and   Faust,    133. 

Ebionites,    44,    47. 

Ecbatana,    41. 

Ecclesiastic  history  of  the 
spread  of  the  Gospel,   126. 


Ecclesiastical  History,  Euse- 
bius',  45. 

Egypt,  38;  Philo  and  the  Thera- 
peutes  in,  45  ;  monotheism  in, 
83,    90. 

Egyptians,  prayers  and  hymns 
of  the,  14f;  despoiled  by 
Israelites  at  the  command  of 
Yahveh,    84. 

Elephantine,    106. 

Eleusis,   Greek   mysteries  at,   28. 

Elijah  and  Yahveh,  S6. 

Elohim,    102    (see  Yahveh). 

Ephesians,   Epistle  to  the,   1. 

Ephod,    the,   85. 

Epictetus,  5,  10,  53. 

Epiplianius,    40,    4S. 

Episcopal  theologians,  67f. 

Epistle  to  the  Hebrews,  the 
Holy  Ghost  and  Christhood 
according  to  the,   56. 

Era,  Christian,  manichaeism  be- 
longs to  the,  42;  prepared  be- 
low the  surface  of  events,  68; 
Gentiles  and  Jews  at  the  be- 
ginning of  the,    83. 

Eros  and  Psyche,  and  the  doc- 
trine of  immortality,  28;  and 
the    Good   Shepherd,    29. 

Esdras,    11. 

Esoteric  doctrine,  monotheism 
as  an,  83. 

Essenes,    44,    46. 

Essential  parts  of  religion.    143. 

Eternal,  the,  Buddha  and  Christ 
as,  56;  Christ  as  the  type  of, 
121;  background  of  the  ma- 
terial world,  140. 

Eternalities   of   existence,    132. 

Ethics,  lofty  Christian,  equally 
characteristic  of  pagan  phil- 
osopliy,    76. 

Ethnic  faiths,   65. 

Ethnological  genesis  of  Judah, 
88f. 

Etruria,    18. 

Et.vmology,  tracing-  kinship  by, 
87. 

Eucharist,  pre-Christian.  17; 
spirit  and  mode  of  its  celebra- 
tion, absolutely  un-Jewish,  24. 


INDEX. 


153 


ESuphrates,  founder  of  sect  of 
the  NaasEeans,  3S. 

Enrydice,    28. 

Eusebius,    43,    45,    46. 

Events,  below  the  surface  of, 
68. 

Evohition  of  Christianity,  130. 

Exaltation   of  Christ,    31. 

Exegetics,  altered  texts  a  stum- 
bling block  for,  llTf. 

E"xile,  Jews  of  the,  60,  95. 

Existence  originates  through 
the  contrast   of  duality.   59. 


Facts  of  history,  11,  48;  funda- 
mental, of  life,  66. 

Faith,  kin  and  constitution  of 
the    new,    4. 

Faithful  and  True  (Revelations), 
73. 

Fakir,  the  turbaned,  as  a  rep- 
resentative of  spirituality,  9. 

Falsification    of    history,    45. 

Fatal  belief  in  self-importance, 
the  Jert's',   97. 

Fatherhood,  supernatural,  pagan 
types  of,  56. 

Fausbol  Prof.,  Michael  Viggo, 
57. 

Faust  and  the  Easter  bells,  133. 

Feeling,  religion  not  merely,  138. 

Felix,  Paul  accused  before,  45. 

"Firstling,  the,"  Christ  as  lead- 
er,  20. 

Folk-soul.  the  subconscious 
realms  of,  7. 

Formative  presences,  Jesus  and 

Buddha,   57f. 
Fourth      Gospel      narrative      of 

Christ's  life,   SO;   least  histori- 
cal, 120. 

Fulfil,  Christianity  comes  to.  63. 

"Fulfilled,   Till   all  be,"   US. 

Ii\indamental  needs  and  aspira- 
tions  of  man,    63. 

Furnace  of  tribulation,  Judaism 
in  the.  95. 

Putak,  41. 


Future,      the,      Christianity      of, 
132f ;  inher.ts  the  past,   143. 


Galatians,    1. 

Galilean,  Jesus  a,  114  ;  fisher 
folk,    119. 

Galton,  123. 

Gautama  and  Christhood,  53, 
57. 

Genealogy,  of  the  gods,  27;  of 
Jesus,   Mary,  and  Joseph,   112. 

Gentile  spirit  of  Christianity,  3; 
Church  founded  by  Paul,  4; 
pagans,  i.  e..  nations  outside 
Judaism,  7;  hostility  to  the 
Jews,  22;  Saviour  and  immor- 
tality,   lUSf. 

Geography  and  the  source  of 
Christianity,    125f. 

Ghost-citing,  an  abomination 
to  the  exilic  Jew,  lOS. 

Gilgamos,   King,   49. 

Gnosis,  38,  39;  pre-Christian,  42, 
45. 

Gnostic  sects  in  the  Augustan 
age,  4. 

Gnosticism,  antedates  Christian- 
ity,   5,    43;    non-Christian,    41 
a  fusion  of  pagan  religions,  47 

God,  personal  interference  of,  2. 
incognito,  13  ;  as  the  Logos, 
universal  doctrine  of,  19;  as 
the  demiuige,  40  ;  incarna- 
tions in  Israel,  43,  44  ;  con- 
ception of  the  Jews  of  the 
exile,  102  ;  as  father,  and  as 
son,  122  ;  of  Evolution,  the, 
130  ;  His  eternal  love,  not 
lost    in    scientific    truth,    133f. 

Goethe,  133. 

Golden  Age,  Roman,  22;  hoped 
for  return   of  the,    23. 

Good  Fi'iday,     Babylonian,     15; 

Israelitic  and  Syrian,  16. 
Good   for  evil,  pagan  sentiment 

of  returning,   76. 

Goodness,  requite  hatred  with, 
78    (see   Lao    tse). 

Gospel,  as  we  know  it,  the  74; 
based   on    facts,    119. 


154 


INDEX. 


Graeco-R  oman  mythology 
polytheistic  paganism  of,  25  ; 
Mithras  and,  59  ;  repudiated, 
82. 

Graetz,  Dr.  Leo,  quoted  on  the 
Dispersion,    100. 

Greece,  doctrines  studied  in,  47. 

Greek  mysteries,  doctrine  of 
immortality  in,  28;  Heracles 
an  example  to  youths,  52f; 
Christian  characters  of  phil- 
osophers,   76. 

Gunkel,  Joh.  Friedr.  Hermann, 
69. 

Guthrie,  Rev.  W.   N.,  54. 

Guyau,    Marie   Jean,    134. 


H 

Haoma,  the  holy  drink  of  Maz- 
daism,   17. 

Harnack,  Prof.  Adolph,  quoted 
on  the  origin  of  Manichseisni, 
42. 

Harun  al  Rashid  and  Thor, 
similar   stories    of,    13. 

Harvest  of  our  hopes,  the  fu- 
ture  is    the,    139. 

Hatred  with  goodness,  requite, 
(L,ao    Tse)    78. 

Hawkesworth,  Rev.  Alan  S.,  C2, 
64,   67. 

Hebrew,  scriptures.  41,  SI;  every 
man  at  heart  a,  104;  language 
lacks  the  female  form  of  the 
word  God,   109. 

Hebron,   88. 

IJegelian  logic,  65. 

Heliand,    the,    9. 

Hellas,    38. 

Hellenistic  period,  the  prepara- 
tory stage  of  the  new  re- 
ligion,   27. 

Heracles,  and  Samson,  52  ;  an 
ideal  hero.  54;  idealized,  57; 
discredited,    tales    of,    128. 

Hermes  Trismegistos,  5,  19. 

Hero  characteristics  of  the 
saviour,  52. 

Hezcklah,  King,  a  vassal  of  As- 
syria, 91. 

Hiel,  85. 


Historical  connection,  between 
Greek  mysteries  and  Christian 
doctrine,  29;  Episcopal  clergy- 
men and  the  love  of,  68 ; 
in  accounts  of  David,  S7f; 
of  Jesus  and  Christology,   120. 

Historicity  of  special  revela- 
tion,   62. 

History  strongly  colored  by 
Christology,    ll'J. 

History  of  the  People  of  Israel, 
86. 

Hither  Asia,   8S. 

"Hodge  podge"  of  orthodoxy,  a, 
65. 

Holiness   of  monks,   the,   45. 

Holy  Ghost,  original  meaning, 
55. 

Holy  Spirit,  sin  against  the,  132. 

Hor,   the  Avenger,   14. 

Horace,  105. 

Horation  ode,  Integer  vitae 
scelerisque  purus,   28,   29. 

Horus,    18,    56. 

Hosea,  the  prophet,  85,  86. 

Hostility,  religious,  based  upon 
rivalry,  42;  of  Judaism  to 
paganism,  82;  between  David 
and  Saul,  S7. 

Human  need  of  comfort  and 
hope,  vmiversal,   62. 

Hygeia,  the  snake  sacred  to,  39. 

Hymns,  Babylonian,  38. 

Hypatia.    5. 

Hyperborean  race,  religion  of  a, 
62. 

Hyppolytus,  44. 


I 


raldabaoth,   39. 

Icons  in  Christian  churches,  110. 

Ideals,    Christ,     Heracles.     Bud- 

di'a.    as    li\'ing,     58;     religious 

traditions     and     subconscious, 

123. 
Idealization,  process  of,  49. 
Ideas,  typically  Christian,  pagan 

parallels  for,   19. 
Identification    of  Marduk,    Yah- 

veh,  and  Christ,  49. 


INDEX. 


155 


Idols,  use  of,  in  the  time  of 
David,  S3. 

Idolatry,  pagan  and  Christian, 
110. 

Images,  as  house  gods,  85; 
wrong  impression  of  the  gen- 
tiles as  worshippers  of.   109. 

Immortality.  Greek  doctrine  of, 
28. 

In  Maiorem  Dei  Gloriam,  the 
motto   of   bigotry,    142. 

Incarnate  God,  Simon  Magus 
as  an,    44. 

Incarnation,  of  the  divine  word, 
Ptah  as  the,  5  ;  of  God  In  Is- 
rael, 43;  of  "Him  who  was 
the  Light",  63;  of  God  in  man, 
128. 

Incas,    62. 

Inconsistency  of  the  Jewish 
faith,    102. 

India,   38,    57. 

Indian  influence  on  Mandsean 
religion,  38;  on  gnosticism,  40. 

Inheritance  from  the  hoary  past, 
religious,   128. 

Initiate?  of  ancient  mysteries, 
80. 

Intermarriage  of  Jews  and  for- 
eigners in  pre-exilic  times,  87. 

International  people,  the  Jews 
an,  C2. 

Intrinsic  necessity  and  the- 
ology,   130. 

Iran,   religion  of  ancient,  38,   59. 

Irenseus,   44. 

Isaiah  calls  Cyrus  "the  Saviour 
King,"  49;  prophesies  the 
glory  of  Zion,  91. 

Ishtar,  Marduk's  marriage  feast 
with,  15;  descends  into  Hell, 
107. 

Isis,  14,  18. 

Islam,  contrast  of  attitudes  in 
monotheistic,    111. 

Israel,  ancient,  Messiahs  of,  43; 
and  the  gentiles,  84;  patri- 
archs and  idols  of,  84,  85; 
God-conception  of.  90;  witches 
expelled    from,    107. 


Jacob,  84. 

Jephthah's    daughter,    85. 

Jericho,   foundations  of,  85. 

Jerome,    46. 

Jerusalem  and  monotheism,  83f; 

siege    of,    91;    preservation    of, 

92;    fall   of,    55. 
Jerusalemitic       Christians,      45  ; 

priesthood,  90. 
Jesuism  and  Christianity,  121. 

Jesus,  the  credited  founder  of 
Christianity,  3f;  made  no 
claims  to  originating  the  es- 
sentials of  religion,  6:  and 
Judaism,  12;  baptized  by  a 
Zabian,  45;  reference  to  "the 
poor,"  47;  prophesies  tribula- 
tion, 51;  according  to  St. 
John,  69;  personality  of,  79; 
mystic  cross  of,  80;  ancestry 
of,  112;  an  Aryan  Jew,  114f; 
always  a  Jew  in  his  religion, 
118f;  his  desire  to  found  a  uni- 
versal religion,  119;  died,  but 
Christ  still  lives,  a  prototype 
of  the  highest  ideal  in  man, 
121. 

Jethro,  Gentile  father-in-law  of 
Moses,    84. 

Jewish  Messiah,  the,  and  Mith- 
ras, 61;  Christian  redactor 
of  the  Revelations,  74;  canon 
appropriated  by  Christians, 
81;  religion,  nationalism  the 
quintessence  of,  96,  103;  rit- 
uals, many  of  pagan  origin, 
102f;   spirit  of  Jesus,   118. 

Jew  and  Gentile,  mutual  con- 
tempt, 11  ;  as  contrasting 
terms,  83;  contrast  funda- 
mental, 111. 

Jews,  the.  of  the  exile.  60;  of 
Judea,  61;  a  remarkable  peo- 
ple. 83;  tenacity  and  fatal 
over-confidence  of,  92,  97,  103; 
as  the  chosen  people,  81,  83: 
of  the  Dispersion,  61,  81,  101; 
to  be  found  everywhere,  yet 
nowhere  allowed  to  remain. 
100,  101  ;  not  ripe  for  mono- 
theism, 102  ;  main  purpose  of 
their  religion,   104. 

Johannine  traditions,    120. 

John   the  Baptist,   49. 


156 


INDEX. 


Jonah  and  the  resurrection  idea, 

uOf. 

Joseph  and  Mary  of  the  Reve- 
lations,  69. 

Josephus      mentions      tlie       Es- 

sencs,    46. 
Josiali,  laws  of,   94. 
'•Jot    and     tittle"     meaning    of, 

116. 

Judah-Israel.  tribe  of  David, 
the  founders  of,  SS;  witches 
exterminated    in,    94. 

Judaism,  less  dualistic  than 
either  paganism  or  Christian- 
ity. 10;  scarcely  a  Christian 
doctrine  can  be  reconciled 
with,  23;  the  mother  of  Chris- 
tianity. 48,  81f;  superseded  bv 
Chripiianity,  63f:  its  history, 
83  ;  the  development  of  Chris- 
tianity and,  84;  date  of  birth. 
90;  a  progress  and  a  contrac- 
tion, 96;  premature  monothe- 
ism, 101  ;  true  root  of  its 
tenacity,  103;  supposed  secret 
truths  of,  105;  its  aversion  to 
ghosts  and  belief  in  immor- 
tality. lOS;  not  the  only  in- 
fluence in  the  molding  of 
Christianity,  125f;  represents 
negation,    129. 

Judaism  and  Christianity,  tra- 
ditional view  of  their  relation. 
2ff ;  mutual  aversion,  11; 
religion  of  Jesus  the  connect- 
ing link  between,  12;  and  the 
Sermon  on  the  Mouni.  116; 
closely  interlinked  yet  the  two 
anathematized  each  other, 
124. 

Judea,  ancient,  cantivity  of, 
91  ;  inevitable  downfall  of, 
93  ;   no   longer  Jewish,   99. 

Judeans,    SS. 

Judge,    Christ    as,    52. 

Julian    the    Apostate,    5. 

Juno,   18. 

Jupiter,    18. 

Justin  Martyr,   44. 


K 

Kaleb,    88. 

Katha     Upanishad,    the.     15. 

Kessler,   Dr.    Hans,   41. 


Khcmosh,   God  of  the  Moabites, 

84. 

King  of  Kings,  73. 
King  Sargon  I,  49. 
Kinship    of    belief    in    Thor    and 

Christ,   9;  of  gnostic  sects,  46. 
Krishna   the   deified,    57. 
Kyrie     Eleison,     the     litany     of 

pagan  soothsayers,   lu. 


Damb,    the,    blood    of,    71;    mar- 
riage supper  of,  73. 
Lamentations,    Lord    of    the,    50. 
Lao   tse,    78. 

Law  in  history,  58;  of  Moses, 
102. 

Legend    of   Merodach,    78. 

Leo  the  Great,  Pope,  41. 

Literal  belief  in  the  dogma  of 
Holy  Ghost  and  virgin  birth, 
56. 

Living  ideal   is  a  potent   factor 

in  history,  a,  58. 

Logia,  of  Jesus,  the,  120. 
Logos,   God  as  the  word  or,   19  ; 

uncreate     and     without      end, 

Christ  as  the,   121. 

Lord's  Supper,  the,  of  probable 
Persian  origin,  18;  an  abom- 
ination to  ancient  Judaism, 
23;  supposed  to  have  been  in- 
stituted by  St.  Paul,  24;  Cal- 
vin and  Luther's  interpreta- 
tion, 23f. 

Loving-kindness,  Buddhist  in- 
junction to  show,   77. 


M 

Magyar's  joke,  the.  126. 

Mahdi,    or  saviour,    111. 

Manasseh,    S8. 

Manda,   38. 

Mandteans,   4,   38,   79. 

Mani,    founder    of    manichaeism, 
41. 

Manichoeans.    4,    41,    79,    80. 


INDEX. 


157 


Mansions   of   our    souls,    future. 

139. 
Marcus  Aurelius,   5,    10. 

Marduk    as    a    saviour    god,    15, 

4y,  uu. 
Martin   Lutlier,   23. 
Martyr  death  of  Jesus,  79. 
Mary    of    the    Revelations,     69; 

mother  of  Jesus,  genealogy  of, 

112. 
Masonic   lodges   and   Mithraism. 

80. 
Mass,    the   Persian   myazda,    the 

Hebrew  Mazza,  and  the,   18. 
Maya,       the      Buddhist      Virgin 

Mary,    56. 
Mazdaism,    17,    38.    (See    Zoras- 

tianism. ) 

Medes  and  Persians,  59. 
Mediator,    idea    of    a    divine,    in 
Mohammedan    countries.     111. 

Mediums,  Biblical  spiritualist, 
107. 

Melkarth,  the  Phoenician  Sam- 
son,   16. 

Menander,    43. 

Mesopotamia,    38,    45. 

Messiah,  original  meaning  not 
saviour,  21  ;  in  Israel,  43  ; 
when  translated  into  Christ, 
61. 

Messiahship  by  grace,  not  by 
descent,  Jesus'  claiin  of.   113f. 

Michal,    and    David's    housegod, 

85. 
Michael,     St.     and    the    dragon, 

71.    (See   Revelation.) 

Mills,  Prof.  Lawrence  H.,  18,  60. 

Minerva,    18.      (Menrva. ) 

Mithras   and   Christ,    17,    61,    62. 

Miracles,  psychical  power  of 
Christ  to  perform,  39f;  and 
the  preservation  of  Jerusalem, 
92. 

Mithraism,  5,  6,  79. 

Moabites,  Khemosh,  God  of  the, 
84. 

Mohammed  expected  second  ad- 
ven'   oi    111. 

Monism,  a  solution,  not  an  abo- 
lition of  dualism,  59. 

Monks,  pagan,  10,  45. 


Monopoly,  religious,  in  Israel, 
91. 

Monotheism,  only  point  of  con- 
tact between  Christians  and 
Jews,  11;  doctrine  of  the  Trin- 
ity incompatible  with  Jewish, 
23;  Persian,  38;  and  Yahveh, 
88;  monomania  of  the  Jews  of 
the  E.xile,  95  ;  the  Jews  a  tit 
vessel  of,  97;  Judaism  and, 
lOlf;  the  Jews  represented  a 
rigorous,  105;  venerable  poets 
of,  110. 

Monotheistic  paganism,  S2f ; 
ancient  Israel  not,  S5;  tenden- 
cies in  Egypt  and  Babylon,  90. 

Mosaic  law,  regarded  by  Paul 
as  temporary,  24;  barbaric,  84; 
fulfilled.   117. 

Moses,  religion  of,  2;  and  the 
Tahveh  cult,  84;  a  patriotic 
Israelite,  85;  marriage  of,  87; 
narrowness  of  the  law  of,  102. 

Moslems,  unitarian.  111. 

Mount  Horeb,  S4. 

Mt.  Zion,  the  national  sanctuary 

of    Yahveh,    in    Israel,    91. 
Multiplicity  in  unity,  59. 
Myazda,    the    consecrated    cake, 

the  resurrection  body,  17. 

Mystic,  formula  of  the  cycle  and 
the  Greek  letter  ir,  72;  cross 
of  Jesus,  the,  SO. 

Mystery,  the  Dispersion  misin- 
terpreted as  a,  99f;  the  Jews 
surrounded  by,  105. 

Myth,  the  Samson  and  Heracles, 
52f ;  Jesus,  not  a,  119. 

Mythology,  similar  religious  leg- 
ends of,  13;  of  the  several 
nations  unified,  27;  of  the  rev- 
elation of  St.  John,  69,  74;  of 
ancient  paganism,  82;  finally 
discredited,  128. 


N 

Naivete,  religious    131. 

Nationalism  of  the  Jews,  egotis- 
tic, S3,  96. 

Nazarenes,  44ff. 

Nazareth  as  the  birthplace  of 
Jesus,  112f. 

Neander,     38,    40. 


158 


INDEX. 


Neighbor,    our   alter-ego,    139. 

Neo-Platonism,  5;  as  dualistic 
as  Christian  philosophy,  lu; 
God  as  the  Logos  in,  ]y;  an- 
ticipated in  ancient  Iran.  59; 
eclectic  systems  of,  67;  in  the 
struggle  for  supremacy,  79; 
psycliology  and  ethics  of,  80. 

Nero's  example  overthrew  be- 
lief in  the  emperor's  divinty. 
128. 

New  movement  in  religion  will 
spiing  from  the  orthodox,  the, 
135f. 

New  Testament,  claim  of  Jesus 
as  the  son  cf  David,  li:i;  and 
the   Gospel   of  Mark,    119. 

Non-Religion  of  the  future,  the 
13-1. 

Number  tt,  the  notion  of,  in 
antiquity,  15f;  and  the  mystic 
formula    of    the    Revelations, 


o 

"Odium  of  the  human  race," 
Jews  considered  the,  97. 

Old  Testament,  utilized  by 
Christianity,  11  ;  Good  Fri- 
day of  the,  16;  Doctrine  of  tlie 
Lord's  Supper  conflicts  with 
the  spirit  of  the,  23;  scholars 
agree  regarding  David's  an- 
cestry, 87;  its  influence  on 
Christianity,  124. 

Ophites,  4;  snake  worshippers, 
38;  their  doctrine  of  evil  per 
se,  40. 

Oriental,  the.  of  today,  9;  west- 
ern civilization  and  customs 
of.   30. 

Orientalism,  the  Buddha  con- 
ception a  climax  of,  57. 

Orient   and   Occident,    Idealizing 

process  in  the,  57. 
Origen,  44. 
Orpheus,  2S. 

Orphic  and  Elevrinian  mys- 
teries.  C2. 

Orthodox  Christian  schola".'3.  61; 
meaning  of  the  term  in  Amer- 
ica, 65. 

Osiris,  13,  14.  18,  29,  62,  128. 


Ostara,  the  goddess,  and  Ostern 

the  German  Easter,  17. 
"Our    own    Religion    in    Ancient 

Persia,"    Prof.    Mills  quoted,    60, 
61. 


Pagan,  the  author's  use  of  the 
term,  as  non-Jewish,  7;  mod- 
em use  of  the  word,  8ff; 
saviours  and  Christian 

Christs.  52,  62;  gods,  Jesus, 
not  related  to,  SO;  mythology 
transfigured  in  Christianity, 
129. 

Paganism,  Christianity  a  grand- 
child of  ancient,  3;  the  teach- 
ings of  stoics  and  idealized,  5; 
noble  traditions  of  pre-Chris- 
tian, S;  not  monistic,  9;  its 
main  features  and  mode  of 
growth,  13;  link  between 
Christianity  and,  25;  rise  of  a 
monistic,  82  ;  Jewish  objec- 
tion to.  107;  superseded  by 
Christianity  in  which  it  re- 
appears, 124;  its  claim  to 
Christian  sources.  126. 

Paganus,  the  natural  man,  66. 

Palestine,   38. 

Pali  scholar,  a,  Prof.  Fausbol, 
57. 

Panpathy.  promptings  of  nat- 
ural religion,  138. 

Parallel  between  Mithras  and 
Christ,  17;  terms  for  saviour, 
22;  conceptions  of  the  Euchar- 
ist. 24;  between  the  snake,  the 
Dragon  and  the  Brazen  ser- 
pent of  Moses,  39;  formations 
in   history,   60. 

Parliament    of    Religions,    142    f. 

Parousia,  of  Christ,   the,    51. 

Parseoism,  the  dragon  svmbol 
of,    39. 

Passion,  of  Christ,  same  idea  in 
Babylon  and  China,  50;  of 
Jesus,  79;  religion  the  deepest 
human,  138. 

Passover,  the  Christian-Jewish, 
17. 

Patriarchal  legend,  SS. 
Paul  the  f  postle,  missionary  ac- 
tivity  of,    4. 


INDEX. 


159 


"Pearls  before  swine,"  ex- 
plained, 116. 

Pelethites,  87. 

Fella,  headquarteis  of  the  Naz- 
arenes,   46. 

Penitential,    109. 

People  without  a  country,  the 
Jews  a.  99. 

Peresh,  88. 

Persephone,   28. 

Persia,  overthrow  of,  affected 
religion,  27;  successful  reform 
in,  90. 

Persian  and  Babylonian  doc- 
trines,  46. 

Persistence  of  Jewish  character, 
in  relation  to  the  success 
of  Christianity,    97f. 

Personality  of  Jesus,  attractive, 
119  ;  thread  upon  which  to 
string   interpretations,    121. 

Pharisaic   Jews,    61. 
Phenomena      of      the      material 

world,   fleeting,   140. 
Phenomenon,    the   Dispersion,    a 

remarkable,   99. 

Philo,    5.   44,   46,    111. 

Philosophers,  pagan,  10;  Chris- 
tian character  of  Greek,  7G; 
not  born  as  such,   140. 

Phoenicians    not      regarded      as 

idolaters,    86. 
Photograph,   a  composite,   123. 
Piety,  Jewish  punctilious,   102f. 
Pinches,    Theophilus,    G.,    77. 
Pittacus,   76. 
Plato,   as  a  Christian   pagan,    7, 

8,   76. 
Platonic     ideas     and     Christian 

doctrine,    121. 
Plebeian   spirit   of  the  primitive 

church,  80. 

Pleroma,  definition.  1;  Christ 
and  Christianity  as  the,  49f, 
130. 

Pliny,  46. 

Plotinus,  5. 

Plutarch     and     Osiris     as     the 

Logos,   19. 
Poets    of    heathen    hymns,    109, 

110. 


Poimander,  19.  (Hermes  Tris- 
megistos. ) 

Polytheistic  temple  service  In 
Egypt,  90. 

Pope  Leo  the  Great,  41. 

Porphyry,    5. 

Post-Exilic  reform,  106. 

Potentialities  of  the  past  con- 
tinue in  the  present,   139. 

"Power  of  God,"  gnostic  expres- 
sion,  44. 

Prayers  of  the  Mandaeans,  38. 

Precedents,  historical  events  as 
religious,   131. 

Pre-Christian  gentiles,  9  ;  Eu- 
charist, 17;  religions,  44; 
monks,   45. 

Pre-exilic  times,  intermarriage 
with  foreigners  in,  87. 

Pre-existence  of  Christ,  a  great 
truth,   121. 

Pre-requisites  in  faith  aa  well 
as  in  Calculus,  66. 

Present  need  of  a  new  pleroma, 
the,    141. 

Priesthood,  why  the  old,  lost  its 
hold  on  the  people,  27. 

Principle  of  wisdom  and  of  evil, 
the,  41. 

Problem  of  the  Dispersion  is  not 
how  did  the  Jews  scatter  but 
how  did  they  preserve  their 
own  type,   101-102. 

Prophecies,  spiritual  meaning 
of,  not  understood  by  the 
Jews,  22;  pagan  religions, 
true,  68. 

Prophetic  literature,  86  ;  party 
in  Israel,   90,   93. 

Prophet,   false,   74. 

Prophets   of  Israel,  93. 

Protestantism  started  on  the 
right  path,   135. 

Prototypes  of  Christ's  miracu- 
lous birth,  49  ;  of  the  gospels, 
74. 

Proto-Mark,  gospel  of,  119. 

Psalm,   pagan  penitential,  109. 

Psyche.      (See    Eros.) 

Psychology    of    Neo-Platonlsm, 

80. 

Ptah,  the  Egyptian,  5. 


160 


INDEX. 


"Pure  Being"  and  "Pure  Noth- 
ing,"   65. 

Puritanism,  its  conception  of 
Cliristianity,    63. 

Purpose  in  pointing  l-insliip  of 
pre-Christian  sects,  46  ;  pre- 
determined,   130. 

Pythagoreanism,   27. 


Q 


Quintessence    of    their    religion, 

Jewish    nationalism,     the.     96; 

of    the    past,     Christianity     is 

the,    127f. 
Queen    of    Heaven,    the    worship 

of.    an    abomination    to    Jews, 

lOSf. 


R 

Rachel,  85. 

Radau,  Dr.  Hugo,  62,  64. 

Ram,  the  saviour-god  in  the 
shape  of  a,  72. 

Rapture  of  fervent  prayer,  133. 

Records  of  Jews,  how  to  under- 
stand the,   127. 

Redactor,  the,  of  the  Revelation 
of  St.  John,  74;  tendency  of, 
88;  of  Deuteronomy.  107;  of 
the  Gospel  of  Matthew,   120. 

Rediviims,  is  Christianity  pagan- 
ism?  129. 

Reform  in  Egypt,  monotheistic, 
90;   post-exilic,   106. 

Reformed  paganism,   79. 

Reformatory  power  of  true  re- 
ligion,   144. 

Regeneration,  emblems  of,  28. 

Reinterpretation  of  the  past,  the 
future  of  religion,  a,   136. 

Religion,  the  new  universal, 
dawn  and  disciples  of,  5; 
claims  of  Christianity  and 
Mithraism  to  tlie  only  true,  6; 
Alexander's  conquest  of  Per- 
sia greatly  affected,  27;  early 
Christian,  accessible  to  the 
masses,  80;  Jewish  rigorous 
monotheistic,  96;  nationalism, 
the  quintessence  of  the  Jew- 
ish,     96;      based     on      eternal 


truths,  not  upon  single  events 
or  persons,  IL'O;  inborn,  137; 
function  of,  140;  a  church  uni- 
versal of  the  future,  143f. 

Religious  development  by  uni- 
fication of  mythologies,  26;  in- 
fidelity of  the  priesthood,  27; 
hymns,  ancient,  109;  Parlia- 
ment in  1893,  142;  Parlia- 
ment Extension  of  1903,  sec- 
retary's concluding  words, 
14of. 

Reminiscences  of  Jesus,  per- 
sonal,   120. 

Resurrection,  symbolized  by  the 
rising  sun,   14;   Christ's,   50. 

Revelation,  of  St.  John  the  Di- 
vine, 21,  70,  75;  New  Year's 
day  and,  52;  Science,  the  new, 
131. 

Reverence   for  the  past,    139. 
"Righteousness     Incarnat  e," 
Mithras   as,    17. 

Ringleader  of  the  Nazarenes,  St. 
Paul  a,   46. 

Rituals,  Christian,  not  any  are 
of  Jewish  origin,  10;  primitive, 
80. 

Rival  faiths,  principle  involved 
in  their  struggle  for  existence, 
5-6  ;  manichseism  and  Chris- 
tianity, 41;  pre-Christian,  79; 
doctrines  and  theories  of,  81  ; 
fate  of,   interlinked,   129. 

River  system,  Christianity  like 
a,  125. 

Roman  Catholic  Church,  the, 
135. 

Roman  Empire,  the,  in  the  Au- 
gustan age.  4;  rival  faiths  of, 
5f;  expectation  of  a  saviour  to 
bring  back  the  Golden  Age  of. 
22;  new  religion  of,  27;  spread 
of  pre-Christian  ideas  in,  45. 

Rosary,  the,  unquestionable  pa- 
gan origin  of,  10. 

"Rovers,"  Jews,  99  ;  a  uni- 
versal tendency  to  be,   104. 


Sacred  books,  Buddhist,  76;  ves- 
sel,   Christianity   the,    134. 
Sacrifice,  Jephthah's,  85. 


INDEX. 


161 


Samaria,  a  hot  bed  of  religious 
commotion,  43. 

Samson,  deatli  and  resurrection 
of,  IG;  and  tlie  pagan  saviour 
idea,  52,  56. 

Samuel,  ghost  of,  108. 

Sangha,  the,  18. 

Sapphira,  an  ETlDionite,  47; 
(See  Ananias.) 

Satan,   inventions  of,  141. 

Saul,  and  the  house  gods  of 
David,  85;  visits  the  Witch  of 
Endor,  107. 

Saviour,  the,  Jesus  as,  11; 
equivalents  for  the  word,  22; 
Christ  as  the  inaugurator  of  a 
new  age,  49;  Cyrus  and  Mar- 
duk  as  the,  49f;  the  word  not 
in  the  Hebrew  language,  61;  of 
the  Revelations,  72  ;  Chris- 
tian iiuman  character  of.  79; 
historical  actuality  of,   128. 

Sayce,  Rev.  Archibald  Henry, 
87,  99f. 

Schiller's  hymn,  Heracles  and, 
54. 

Scholarly  investigations.  real 
value  to  religion  of,  120f. 

Scholars,   Old  Testament,   87. 

Schrader,  Prof.  Otto,  quoted,  49, 
87,  SS. 

Scientific  truth  discovered,  not 
made,  contrasted  with  theo- 
logical truth,   131f. 

Seances,  Biblical,  107. 

Sebastos,   28.      (See  Augustus.) 

Segab,    85. 

Seneca,    10,    53. 

Sennacherib    and    the    siege    of 

Jerusalem,  91. 
Sentiment,     first     expression     of 

religious  emotion,   238. 

Seraphim,  original  Hebrew 
meaning,   39. 

Sermon  on  the  Mount,  the,  69; 
Judaism  in,  116f;  compared  to 
the  origin  of  a  river  system, 
126. 

Serpent,  true  meaning  of  the 
brazen,  39 ;  of  the  Revela- 
tions,  the.    71. 

Seth,  the  Egyptian  and  the  Bib- 
lical, 5. 


Shaddai  of  Abraham,  102.  (See 
Yaliveh. ) 

Sheites,   111. 

Shiva,   18. 

Siege  of  Jerusalem  by  Senna- 
cherib, 91. 

Similar  faiths  in  Egypt,  Greece, 
Rome  and  America,  62. 

Simile  between  geography  and 
religion,   125. 

Simon   Magus,    43f. 

Simonism,  79. 

Sinai,  84. 

Snake,  originally  a  symbol  of 
goodness,  39;  messenger  of  the 
highest  God,  40.  (See  ser- 
pent.) 

Socrates,  7,  8,  76. 

Solar  worship  in  the  temple  of 
Jerusalem,   86. 

Solicitude   for  the  future,   139. 

Solomon,  temple  of,  86;  mother 
of,    87. 

Soothsayers,  Kyrie  Eleison  and 
pagan,   10. 

Sorcery,  Simon  Magus  accused 
of,   43. 

Spiritual  nature,  attributes  of, 
140. 

Spiritualists,    Biblical,    107. 

Spontaneity,  and  widespread 
religious   ideas,   60,   138. 

St.   Athanasius,   65. 

St.  Augustine,  20.  65. 

St  Paul,  believed  to  have  insti- 
tuted the  Lord's  Supper.  24; 
and  the  Greek  mystery  plays, 
29;  accused  before  Felix,  45; 
born  during  the  Dispersion, 
105  ;  explains  the  cause  of  the 
Dispersion,  106;  gnostic  views 
of.  111;  the  ancestry  of  Jesus 
according  to,  112;  and  the 
■  Mosaic  law,   117. 

St.  Peter.  Ananias  and  Sap- 
phira   before,    47. 

St.  Thomas  Aquinas,  65. 

State  religions  in  ancient  cities. 
25. 

Statues,  why  there  are  no  Jew- 
ish, 110. 
Stoics,  purified  paganism  of,   5. 


162 


INDEX. 


Stone    Pillar,    the,    85. 

Story  of  Jesus   reinterpreted  by 

successive    generations,    120. 
Stubbornness,      the     reason      of 

Jewish,  93. 
Subconscious   ideals,   12S. 
Success  of  Christianity,  reasons 

for  the,   79. 
Suffering  sanctifies,  79. 
Summation,      Christianity      the, 

67. 
Superhuman     personality,      the, 

of     the     Revelations     of     St. 

John,   69. 
Supernaturalism,     Greek     belief 

in,   9. 
Superpersonal    presences,    Mith- 
ras   and    Christ,    61,    121. 
Supremacy,     struggle     of     rival 

faiths  tor,   79. 
Sutta   Nipata,   77. 
Symbol    of    divine    wisdom,    the 

snake  as  a,  39. 
Symbolical,    the    Lord's    Supper 

interpreted      by      Calvin      and 

Zwingli  as,  23. 
Symbolism    of    dogmatic    Chris- 
tianity,  122. 
Synagogue,    the.    modern   center 

of   Jewish  nationalism,   103f. 
Synoptic      Gospels,      74  ;     based 

on   earlier   documents,    119. 

Syria,  SS. 


Tacitus,  his  epithet  for  Jews, 
97. 

Tahpanhes,  Jew  colony  in  Low- 
er Egypt,  106. 

Talisman,  preservative,  of  the 
Jews,    106. 

Talmud,    the,    11. 

Tammuz,   16,  29. 

Tarsus,   Paul  of,   24. 

Tathagata,   23. 

Technical   terms,   gnostic,    44. 


Tel  Amarna  Tablets,  the,  90. 
TeleoIog>'    dominates   the    world, 

an    immanent,    130. 
Temple    of    Jerusalem,    the,    86; 
reform  in  Jerusalem,  the  fam- 
ous,   90ff. 
Teraphim,   85. 
Terminology,       Indian,       Greek, 

and   Buddhist,    3S. 
Terms   used   by   St.    Paul    in   his 
Christian      doctrines,      signifi- 
cant of  Greek  mysteries,   29. 
Teutonic    world-conception,    9. 
Thalna,  18. 

Theologian,  on  the  coincidences 
between   paganism   and   Chris- 
tianity,  views   of,    62  ;   a  well- 
informed,    67. 
Therapeutes,   4,   44. 
Things,   all,   in   one,   1. 
Thousand    and    One   Nights,    13. 
Tinia,  18. 
Tonsure,    the   practice   of  pagan 

monlis,   10. 
Traditions   reconstructed   in    tlie 

Revelation  of   St.   John,   75. 
Transfigured    paganism,     Chris- 
tianity the  fulfilment  of,  129. 
Tran.sition,   period  of,   25;   phase 

of  the  Christ  ideal,  69. 
Transubstantiation,  mystical 

act  of,   24. 
Tribulation,     and     the     Saviour, 
51;  Judaism  in  the  furnace  of, 
95. 
Trinity,    the    EgjT)tian,    14;    the 

Simonian,   44. 
Trinitarianism,    Gentile,    111. 
Trinities,     well-known,     Roman, 
Etrurian.    Egyptian,    Babylon- 
ian,   Brahman,    Buddhist,    18. 
Triratna,    Buddhist   doctrine  of, 

and  the  Trinity,   IS. 
Truth,    scientific    and    theologi- 
cal,    131f;     superhuman,     132; 
dawns  in  symbols,   141. 
Tusita   heaven    of    eternal    bliss, 

the,   56. 
Type,     Jewish,     how     preserved 

under  the  Dispersion,   lOlf. 
Tyre,  Easter  customs  in,  16. 


INDEX. 


163 


U 

Urim  and  Thummim,  S5. 

Unique  phenomenon,  the  ^ews 
a,    83. 

Uniqueness  of  special  revela- 
tion,  the,   62. 

Unitarianisni,    Jewish,    111. 

Universal  religion  founded  by 
Jesus,  119;  why  needed,  127; 
of  the  future,  137. 


World-conception  u  n  d  e  r  1  ying 
old  creeds  and  pagan  myths, 
4;  the  Teutonic,  9;  of  Judali, 
89;   the  old  pagan,   129. 

World,  the,  renewal  and  break- 
down of,  51;  mission  of 
Christ,  115;  swayed  by  divine 
thought,    132. 

Worship  in  Israel,  customary 
form  of,   S6. 

"Worship  on   the  Heights,"   90. 


V 

Venerable  poets,    110. 

Vessel  of  monotheism,  the  Jews 
a,    97. 

Views  of  the  Jewish  Dispersion, 
poetical,  105. 

Virgil's  fourth  eclogue  a  Chris- 
tian prophecy,  23,   128. 

Virgin,  Mary  and  the  worship 
of  Isis,  15;  birth,  literal  belief 
in   the   dogma  of,    56. 

Vishnu,   18. 

Vollers,  Prof.  Karl,  quoted  on 
the  Dispersion,  101. 


w 

White  horse  of  the  Revelations, 
the,    73. 

William  the  Conqueror  and 
Alexander  the  Great,   30. 

Wisdom,  snake  symbol  of  di- 
vine,  39. 

Witch  of  Endor,  107. 

Witnesses  for  Christianity,  the 
Jews,   SI. 

Wizards  and  witches  extermin- 
ated in  Israel,  94. 

Word  of  God,   the,   73. 

World-religions,  the  same  un- 
der whatever  name,  2;  similar 
origins  of,  3;  essentials  of, 
must  be  universal,  fi;  Chris- 
tianity as  one  of  the,  due  to 
Jewish  persistence,   98. 


X 

Xenions,   Heracles   in   Schiller's, 
55. 


Yahveh,  the  national  God  of 
Israel.  49,  84ff;  the  Jews- 
stubborn  belief  in,  95f;  identi- 
fied with  different  Jewish 
tribal   God-conceptions,    102. 


Zabians,  Mani  and  the  faith  of 
the,   41. 

Zarathustra,  8,  59. 

Zealous  converts  made  by  sym- 
pathy, 79. 

Zebaoth  of  Ephraim,    102.     (See 
Yahveh.) 

Zion,   Mt.,   the   favorite   place  of 
Yahveh,   91. 

Zend     literature.     Prof.     L.     H. 

Mills  an    authority   on,    18ff. 
Zerakh,  S8. 

Zerubbabel,  last  of  the  house  of 
David,   112. 

Zeus,    Heracles'    sonship    to,    53, 
56. 

Zodiac,    the    Revelations    of    St 
John   and   the,    69. 

Zoroastrianism,     38,     60.         (See 
Mazadism.) 

Zwingli,  Huldreich,  23. 


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